THE WRONG REGRET:

Having spent over two years in solitary confinement while he was imprisoned in Vietnam, Mr. McCain has no use for being alone, whether it is in the intensive care unit or at his ranch. And his deck is where he receives a constant flow of friends -- with visits that often end with Mr. McCain saying, "I love you" -- and takes calls on the iPhone he just swapped for his tattered flip phone. (Mr. McCain finally made the switch to download the Major League Baseball app to better follow his Arizona Diamondbacks.)

Mr. Biden and his wife, Jill, were there last weekend; Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican, and his wife, Cheryl, visited Friday; other colleagues are set to come this week and his seven children are there as often as they can. The phone calls have been even more frequent: Former President George W. Bush checked in last week, telling Mr. McCain the country is missing him.

In a visit on the deck earlier this year, Mr. Flake said he and Mr. McCain recalled how in the 1980s the legendary former Arizona congressman Morris Udall, a Democrat, had taken the newly elected Mr. McCain under his wing despite their differences in party.

"It was the two of us lamenting the loss of the politics of the past," Mr. Flake said.

It was also at his Hidden Valley Ranch where the senator participated in a nearly two-hour HBO documentary and co-wrote what he acknowledges will be his last book, "The Restless Wave," both of which are set to be released this month.

The film and the book, a copy of which The New York Times obtained independently of Mr. McCain, amount to the senator's final say on his career and a concluding argument for a brand of pro-free trade and pro-immigration Republicanism that, along with his calls for preserving the American-led international order, have grown out of fashion under President Trump.

In the book, Mr. McCain scorns Mr. Trump's seeming admiration for autocrats and disdain for refugees.

"He seems uninterested in the moral character of world leaders and their regimes," he writes of the president. "The appearance of toughness or a reality show facsimile of toughness seems to matter more than any of our values. Flattery secures his friendship, criticism his enmity."

Yet many in Mr. McCain's own party believe that, by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, he bears at least a small measure of blame for unleashing the forces of grievance politics and nativism within the Republican Party.

While he continues to defend Ms. Palin's performance, Mr. McCain uses the documentary and the book to unburden himself about not selecting Mr. Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent, as his running mate.

He recalls that his advisers warned him that picking a vice-presidential candidate who caucused with Democrats and supported abortion rights would divide Republicans and doom his chances.

"It was sound advice that I could reason for myself," he writes. "But my gut told me to ignore it and I wish I had."

Even more striking is how Mr. McCain expresses his sorrow in the documentary. He calls the decision not to pick Mr. Lieberman "another mistake that I made" in his political career, a self-indictment that includes his involvement in the Keating Five savings and loan scandal and his reluctance to speak out during his 2000 presidential bid about the Confederate battle flag flying above the South Carolina Capitol.

Mr. Lieberman said he didn't know Mr. McCain felt that regret until he watched the film. "It touched me greatly," he said.

Here in his adopted state, he has been immortalized as an icon. "John McCain is a giant in Arizona," said Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, expressing sentiments that were echoed by the teachers protesting at the state Capitol last week.

Erik Gillman, a math instructor, said Mr. McCain had become the new Barry Goldwater, a figure as inextricably identified with the desert as cactus.

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