His supporters say McCain's emergence as a Senate power broker after 2000 showed he could forge useful relationships with both backers and detractors of U.S. President George Bush. But some Democrats cast his record as that of a fickle gadfly who has swung to the party's right wing, The New York Times reported Monday.

"(McCain) is a lot more savvy than a lot of people realize -- targeted, tactical, strategic -- and sometimes only he knows what his real objective is," U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., told the newspaper.

"You couldn't tell which John McCain would come to work on any given day," countered U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., a supporter of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

The newspaper reported that McCain's friends say he isn't an ideologue, usually favoring limited-government conservative views but also willing to expand government authority if the goal seemed important enough.