I was born into a tradition of military service. My forebears were not politicians, but they were leaders. And although they may have disdained the guile and artifice often associated with the practice of politics, they nonetheless recognized and admired national leadership when they saw it. If they measured it slightly less manful than martial valor, they still saw the honor in it. And they taught me to respect it, even if they expected me to keep a wary distance from it.

Political leadership is not so great a stretch for the military officer with a career change in mind. Those who manage it do so, I suppose, because they can't imagine a life without wanting a prominent place in the nation's affairs, a place of honor in a great nation's history. We are taught to think of the country as greater than ourselves, to love it not exclusively, but wholeheartedly. Even if we don't heed the lessons at first, war will usually convert us. And it becomes a love we cannot part with. Perhaps some of us come to believe that the country cannot part with us. That, of course, is a delusion, but it can be a beautiful delusion as long as it doesn't reverse the order of our allegiances.

I have now spent nearly as many years in elected office as I had spent in the navy. The years I have spent in public life have always seemed a natural extension of my former career. And I have brought to it the same idiosyncrasies that marked my career in uniform, chief among them my desire to be my own man, to serve, to the greatest extent possible, on my own terms. As it turns out, politics has been even more accommodating to someone with my eccentricities than was the navy. I suspect my personality might sometimes test the limits of that accommodation, as it has certainly tried the forbearance of my colleagues. But I have been granted a place, albeit a very small one, in American history, and I have been permitted, warts and all, to spend my entire adult life in the service of my country. Lucky me.

I'm sixty-four years old as we begin this book, which seems a bit old to be routinely described as a maverick. American popular culture admits few senior citizens to its ranks of celebrated nonconformists. We lack the glamorous carelessness of youth and risk becoming parodies of our younger selves. Witnessing the behavior can make people uncomfortable, like watching an aging, overweight Elvis mock the memory of the brash young man who had swaggered across cultural color lines.

I fear many things, but only few things more than appearing ridiculous. And my chest does not swell with pride when I encounter every reference to "Senator John McCain, the maverick Arizona Republican," even when it is meant as a compliment. I worry that the act might be getting a little tired for a man of my years. Better for old men to be known as collegial team players, who expect to find in the warmth of their associations a tonic for fears of approaching infirmity and extinction.

Beyond the question of appearances, I doubt my maverick reputation will give me much comfort when I have left the public arena. I learned in Vietnam how short a distance separates the individualist from the egotist and how neither can match the strength of a community united to serve a cause greater than self-interest. I have not forgotten the lesson, although some of my detractors might accuse me of lately avoiding its practical implications, and I have enough self-doubt to worry that they are occasionally right.

I am not, as some would have it, a loner. On the contrary, I am almost constantly surrounded by people, and I would not have it any other way. I find little peace in solitude. The restlessness that has always harassed me produces only uneasiness when I am alone. I need company, my family, my friends, my staff, to find a useful occupation for my energy.

Yet despite having a sociable nature, I often stray from certain conventions of the society in which I voluntarily sought membership. In too many instances, with more zeal than circumstances warrant, my expressions of independence reveal nothing more substantial than an instinctive resistance to institutional customs that strike me as empty gestures of submission.

I have an acute, much too acute, sensitivity to abuses of authority, which always questions, and often misinterprets (sometimes absurdly so), practical exercises of organizational leadership. Occasionally, when the Senate majority leader finds it useful to have the attention of all ninety-nine of his colleagues, he will summon us to the Senate chamber by ordering a roll call vote on a motion "to instruct the sergeant at arms to request the presence of absent senators." Sometimes, but very rarely, the instruction will be "to compel" our attendance. In either instance, fearing the exercise is an unwarranted infringement on my liberty, I vote against the motion. Of course, the leader's purpose has been served, since the vote, whether it be yea or nay, requires that I come to the chamber to cast it. Nor would I purposely begrudge the leader my presence whenever he requires it. It's just the idea of granting the sergeant at arms the authority to make me come that bothers me. I know it's a trivial matter, and my behavior might appear eccentric, but I find it hard to do otherwise.

In other, more important matters, I have also found it necessary from time to time to take a position or a course of action that puts me in conflict with my leaders and with the collected wisdom of my party they represent. I hope I have done so for better reason than because I've mistaken contrariness for self-respect.

I enjoy my work and am grateful for the honor of serving in the United States Senate. There are many people in Congress, and in the rest of government, who are smarter, wiser, and more capable than I am. To be in their company is a privilege and a first-rate education. Many who have served here have been an inspiration to me, and their example offers instruction in the obligations of public duty to anyone fortunate to serve in the same capacity. All the more reason to take better care to show my appreciation for this institution and the men and women who serve here.

But I am known more for my criticism than my admiration of the contemporary practice of political leadership. That is a failing I hope to correct in this book, which I intend to be an honest look at events from my career that balances criticism with tribute to the patriotism and conscientiousness of public servants whose example makes me all too aware of my own shortcomings. I do not want any criticism implied or expressed in this book to leave the reader with the impression that public service is anything less than an honorable profession, practiced more by the selfless than the self-serving. I have done that in the past, and what rebukes I have earned for it are more deserved than any praise I have received for my outspokenness.

A smart, young, conservative journalist who disapproves of me once wrote that at a weekly lunch of Republican senators, I show my disdain for my colleagues by always sitting at the same table with my back to most of my colleagues. I do sit at the same table every week with a few of my closer friends in the Republican caucus. But I never thought it displayed bad manners. I had not intended to offend anyone. I just enjoy sitting with my friends, and since many of my colleagues seat themselves in the same company every week, I don't find the practice to be out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, the complaint gives you an idea of the affection some of my colleagues have for me. The journalist doesn't attend our lunches. So one of my colleagues or one of the Senate leadership staff who does attend them must have portrayed my dining habits as an intentional discourtesy.

It is apparent that I'm not the most popular member of the Senate. Some detractors dismiss me as little more than a nuisance. More aggrieved critics consider me disloyal, unreliably partisan, and disrespectful of Senate traditions. I take no pride in their disapproval. But while I would like to have my colleagues' affection, I will settle for their respect. Even that, I must acknowledge, can be hard to gain when the animosity I occasionally incite among some obscures the purpose of whatever I had done that upset them.

Were I to catalog all my faults, they would run the length of this book. So I know I own a large share of the blame for the disaffection I am regarded with in some quarters. I'm not sure how much of it can be helped, though. We can all stand a little self-improvement from time to time, but it's hard to accomplish when you have reached my age. I have my reputation, and not enough years left in my career to improve it much. I'm an independent-minded, well-intentioned public servant to some. And to others, I'm a self-styled, self-righteous, maverick pain in the ass.

Life would be easier, if not as interesting, if everyone shared the more generous view of my public profile. No less than the next guy, I like to be liked, and I am genuinely grateful for the friendships I have formed in this business and for the measure of public approval I am lucky to possess. Perhaps I could be a more effective legislator if I showed greater deference to the customs of contemporary political culture, were I better at finessing my disagreements with my colleagues and with the leaders of my party, if I used a little more subtlety and a little less passion to pursue my goals. I can think of worse things to be than a well-liked member of the club. Yet I have never sought the distinction very vigorously.

In political parties, leaders more often than not work their way up a hierarchy, making more friends than enemies along the way and keeping their personalities firmly fastened to a corporate identity. Curiously, that is less often the case with those who have reached the pinnacle of the profession, the presidency. Maybe that was among the rationales I grasped when I decided to seek that office. Or maybe putting too much faith in the rationale contributed to my lack of success. I don't know. But God knows I wonder if I could have realized more of my own ambitions had I made less trouble for others and for myself.

This is a very competitive business. It is by nature adversarial. Enemies (professional, if not personal) come with the zip code. You don't have to accumulate them unnecessarily. Politicians with the longest and most successful careers are often those who have ruffled the fewest feathers. They zigzag toward their goals, twisting around obstacles, taking care and time to acquire as few opponents as possible and as much support as their success requires. I admire their patience and agility. I have too little of those attributes to work obliquely. God has given me heart enough for my ambitions, but too little forbearance to pursue them by routes other than a straight line.

Could I have gone further in this, my second career, had I tried harder to conform to established models for success? Would I have proved a better servant of my country? My mistakes, which I regret very much, have not discouraged my aspirations. Nor have the lessons they taught me, important lessons, worked a profound change on my personality. Some change, to be sure, and for the better, I hope. I would hate to think that I had never matured from the smart-ass Naval Academy plebe who thought personal honor was such a fragile thing that any slight or compromise threatened it. But I am not unrecognizable to those who knew me then, and I don't know if that should gratify or worry me.

At some point, my long-held aspiration to be a leader grew into something more grandiose. I wanted to lead my country. That was perhaps too great an ambition for a man so stuck in his ways. A quick adaptability to changing circumstances and public perceptions seems to be the common, critical faculty of successful candidates for the office, at least in recent times. I don't mean to imply that those who succeed where I had failed must surrender their principles to the pursuit or hide important truths about themselves. For it is hard to succeed if the public is convinced that you lack conviction or honesty. They just show a greater ability than I evidently have to meet the expectations, the frequently changing expectations, that other professionals, the press, and the public hold for winning candidates. They are masters of contemporary political conventions and, thus, are deemed fit to hold the office that for a time will determine what those conventions are.

That is not how my life has worked out. How I account for that will become, I suspect, one of my occupations when I, reluctantly, retire from public life. And although I seem to tolerate introspection better the older I am, there are still too many claims on my attention to permit more than the briefest excursions down the path of self-awareness. When I am no longer busy with politics, and with my own ambitions, I hope to have more time to examine what I have done and failed to do with my career, and why.

Now, and more so with every new year added to my total, I am a little more given to look back for clues to my life, but only in glimpses. I look ahead, as always, for the purpose of living. And when I do look back, I see people more than events, not all of them real, or, at least, not as real to others as they are to me. They are among the heroes of my fortunate past, who are as alive in my imagination today as they were when I imagined them observing the antics of the boy who foolishly thought himself man enough to emulate them.