Missing the point on McCain?

So Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, responded to criticism of the paper’s recent piece on John McCain by . . . apologizing? Explaining that they have actual evidence for their contentions, and giving good reasons why they didn’t print it? Retracting the story? No; he responded by blaming the readers.

Frankly, I was a little surprised by how few readers saw what was, to us, the larger point of the story. . . . [that] this man who prizes his honor above all things and who appreciates the importance of appearances, also has a history of being sometimes careless about the appearance of impropriety, about his reputation.

Now, leave aside for a moment whether you believe this defense or not, or indeed whether you believe it qualifies as a defense or not, and just look at what he’s saying. First, Keller says that Sen. McCain “prizes his honor above all things,” which isn’t quite true but is certainly close enough for journalistic work. Then he says that Sen. McCain “appreciates the importance of appearances,” and then that the point of the story is that the senator actually has a pattern of not appreciating the importance of appearances. It would seem, then, that the assertion that Sen. McCain “appreciates the importance of appearances” rests not on the senator’s behavior, but on the preceding statement that he “prizes his honor.”

In other words, if I’m parsing this correctly, Keller’s defense of his paper’s story rests on the assumption that caring about honor means caring about appearances—which is to say, that honor is the same thing as reputation. I’m not surprised to find the NYT thinking this way, but I very much doubt that Sen. McCain makes this mistake; indeed, if he did, he would never have ended up with the public persona he has. You don’t earn the label of a straight-shooting maverick who’ll offend your friends as soon as your enemies if you’re concerned about appearances; that one is earned precisely by caring about the reality of honor so much that you’re willing to let your reputation swing in the wind. As the sci-fi/fantasy author Lois McMaster Bujold has one of her characters say,

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. Guard your honor; let your reputation fall where it may.

I think Sen. McCain knows the truth of that; demonstrably, the New York Times doesn’t. We’d be better off if they did.