"It went very badly," said one source. "Rumsfeld brought over McCain to schmooze him. It didn't work."

The sources differed on the exact wording, but they agreed that when Mr. Rumsfeld was unable to persuade the Arizona Republican to let the nominees go forward, he suggested the senator, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was hurting the war effort.

"This is when McCain just about climbed over the table," one source said.

A spokeswoman for the senator did not return phone messages.

The two men, who share a penchant for blunt talk, had not gotten along well before the meetings. But defense and congressional aides say the relationship worsened afterward, with the senator dug in even harder on blocking the nominees.

Coming from a German background as I do, I know something about blunt talk, but at some point in my life I realized that the virtue of bluntness is accepting it in others and eschewing it yourself.

In a political environment so poisoned by extreme partisanship, McCain is like throwing gasoline on an already raging fire. If as a politician, he couldn't come to some sort of accommodation with a member of his own party, a key official in an administration that he supports, how the hell is he going to deal with Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid?

Not since Abraham Lincoln have we needed Abraham Lincoln so badly, and John McCain ain't him. I am not suggesting that we need a great compromiser--Politics is about compromise, leadership is about vision. What we do need though is someone with the Lincolnesque talent of getting opinionated, ambitious, self-important men and women to cooperate in a grand venture.

McCain's failure with Rumsfeld, and his subsequent petty and public castigation of someone who "got in his way" is about as good an indicators of McCain's unsuitability for the presidency as one could hope for.