There was a time when you could look at Arizona Sen. John McCain and imagine the Republican presidential candidate as an older version of Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer character on "24."

Both have death-haunted stares that narrow into steely squints when they feel under siege. Both are intimately acquainted with torture -- one through the magic of television, the other courtesy of a Vietcong prison camp.

You don't get much of a sense of Jack Bauer's domestic politics from the show, but judging by his increasingly harsh interrogation tactics this season, he wouldn't lose too much sleep over shenanigans at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib.

Before he became obsessed with winning the Republican presidential nomination at all costs, Mr. McCain was a staunch but principled conservative who reflected the values of his Old West libertarian constituents.

Though I was never wild about Mr. McCain's politics, there was enough Goldwater-style pragmatism oozing through his pores to make him an interesting figure to watch and occasionally cheer.

His fight with his fellow Republicans over campaign finance reform along with his push for unambiguous resolutions against government-sanctioned torture earned him a reputation as a maverick.

The fact that chicken hawks in the Bush campaign used racist tactics to smear him during the 2000 South Carolina primary made Mr. McCain sympathetic to progressive voters.

His denunciation of religious intolerance in general and the Rev. Jerry Falwell in particular prompted moderate-to-liberal Democrats to swoon in public.

When he abruptly reversed himself last year by giving the commencement address at Mr. Falwell's Liberty University, it was the beginning of John McCain's long campaign of pandering to his party's conservative base.

Occasionally, Mr. McCain says something unflattering about the administration's handling of Iraq and the war. Recently, he called Donald Rumsfeld the worst secretary of defense ever.

When asked what he thought about Mr. McCain's increasingly rare bouts of impolitic honesty, Vice President Dick Cheney couldn't wait to put Mr. McCain's criticism into perspective.

"I just fundamentally disagree with John," Mr. Cheney told ABC reporter Jonathan Karl two days ago. "John said some nasty things about me the other day, and then the next time he saw me, ran over to me and apologized. Maybe he'll apologize to Rumsfeld."

When the reporter repeated Mr. McCain's charge that President Bush was guilty of listening too much to Mr. Cheney's advice, the vice president relished filling in the details of the senator's supine humiliation:

"Well, he came up to me on the [Senate] floor a couple of days later -- said he'd been quoted out of context, and then basically offered an apology which I was happy to accept."

This is where Jack Bauer and John McCain part company. Bauer wouldn't have apologized to a five-time deferment "warrior" like Cheney under any circumstance.

In fact, Bauer would have tied a plastic bag around his head if he was convinced the vice president had worked against the interests of the United States.

This is in no way an endorsement of the torture that has become as common as getting a parking ticket on this season of "24" -- it's just an observation.

Instead of apologizing to the shadowy godfather of America's failed Iraq policy, Mr. McCain should have reminded Mr. Cheney of the administration's disastrous missteps from rendition to insufficient body armor for the troops; Abu Ghraib to the escalating cost of a war we'll probably lose; the appalling death count to the failure to plan adequately for post-war Iraq after Saddam was deposed.

Mr. McCain should have waved copies of the heartbreaking series running in the Washington Post this week about the shameful conditions endured by wounded veterans at Walter Reed Army Center under Mr. Cheney's nose.

Once upon a time, John McCain was a hero who effectively resisted the bullying of his Vietnamese tormentors. Given his experiences, how could he apologize to Mr. Cheney about anything? Is it worth losing one's soul to become president of the United States?

Self-flagellation for the sake of political expedience looks an awful lot like torture.