The word “maverick” was once upon a time widely employed to pigeon-hole Republican presidential candidate John McCain. These days, however, its users (and enablers) have been whittled down to only those within the McCain campaign itself. Its surrogates still trumpet the descriptor every chance they get, but those outside that bubble use it in more in ironic derision than agreement.

In dictionaries and references, the word has many definitions. A “maverick” can be a queen or a jack in a pocket poker hand; the fifth album by the band George Thorogood and the Destroyers; a British chocolate bar; a South African business magazine; the name of a popular 1950’s tv series; and the title of a 1994 feature comedy starring Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, and James Garner.

In common parlance, we take it as a reference to a person “who exhibits great independence in thought and action“. In politics, you’d think it would be used to describe a politician with zero ambitions for any top job. Though its usage in a positive light is increasingly hard to swallow for observers of his campaign, McCain still wants people to believe he’s a maverick in the former sense of the word. This is a safe assumption, as he looks nothing like Mel Gibson and it’s pretty clear what his ambition is.

If we’re to be taken as fools (and we are), “Maverick” is a brand that sums up McCain’s character in just three syllables. Looking at even the most optimistic polling data, it’s clear that at least 30% of the American public are still buying it, which is roughly the same number who believe Adam & Eve rode to church on the backs of dinosaurs. It still works, but not well enough to chart a course to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

So why cling to a failed brand so ferociously? My guess is that if one were to steal it from him, one gets the feeling that he would either deflate like a pierced and pathetic animal balloon or explode magnificently like the Hindenburg in a glorious shower of soundless sparks. He loves it that much.

His 2008 campaign, now looking more doomed than ever, was “mavericky” from the start. First, he did several about-faces on just about every issue that was held “dear” to him during his 2000 run in order to appease the religious right, and only regained his footing after almost losing the Republican primary right out of the gate by not being one of the following:

1. a Mormon who let the dogs out
2. a total bumpkin who couldn’t tell Canada from a donut
3. a guy who milked 9/11 for a living

What has followed since has been the slow release of a new kind of “maverickness”. From picking a unqualified, constantly lying prom queen as his running mate to suspending his campaign to diss Letterman and wax geriatric with Katie Couric (before returning to Washington to lay a turd on the bailout plan), he has subtly redefined the word to also mean “a person who is totally rudderless and ridiculous in thought and action“. If he is indeed a maverick, then so is Pee Wee Herman, Theoren Fleury, and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

But if we dig even deep into the etymology of the term, we discover its origins can be traced back to mid-19th century Texas, where a rancher named Samuel A. Maverick was the only one of his colleagues who didn’t brand his calves in order to identify and claim them if they were lost or stolen. When a cow was found wandering alone without a brand burned into its hide, it was dubbed a “maverick”. Now, if McCain was really fat, and I mean President Howard Taft fat, that would be in and of itself a rather amusing aside, but what makes this really funny is that Samuel Maverick’s descendants (all seemingly remarkable mavericks themselves) are actually fightin’ furious over McCain’s usurpation of their name.

From The New York Times two weeks ago:

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants. […]

Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.

This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.

Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”

“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”

“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

Ouch. If this guy can’t even vet himself without breaking his shins, how can he possibly run a country?