David Brooks sees another two sides of Mr. McCain. (Last week Ryan Lizza saw two different sides.)
The Davis-Weaver rivalry has lasted for so long because John McCain has a foot in each camp. McCain is, on one level, a figure of the Washington mainstream. He admires Alan Greenspan and Henry Kissinger. He appreciates a steady manager like Davis.
But McCain is also a renegade and a romantic. He loves tilting at the establishment and shaking things up. He loves books and movies in which the hero dies at the end while serving a noble, if lost, cause. He loves the insurgent/band-of-brothers ethos that Weaver exudes.
Both Mr. Brooks and Mr. Lizza are trying to explain the same phenomenon: how Mr. McCain can survive, and even thrive, in Washington for a quarter of a century while appearing to many as an outsider trying to reform the system.