More on McCain:
March 23, 2001
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McCain Against Bush:
The Guns of March
By PAUL A. GIGOT
Everyone wonders if Al Gore will run for president again. But the question that really worries George W. Bush is whether John McCain will run again.
The Arizona senator and war hero denies any such ambition, and no one in the White House will say it on the record. But the prospect -- the implicit threat -- is the elephant in the room of the Senate's current campaign-finance debate. It's the reason many Republicans doubt President Bush will veto even a bad "reform" bill.
A GOP senator close to the White House says, "That's their nightmare scenario, that McCain heads for New Hampshire in 2004 to go out in a blaze of glory." Or, just as damaging, that he does a Teddy Roosevelt-Ross Perot and runs as an independent. (Apologies to TR's descendents for mentioning those two across the same hyphen.)
It's true Mr. McCain campaigned hard for Mr. Bush last year. But that was a matter of duty, honoring the promise he made to GOP voters in the primaries. For John McCain, politics is all about personal honor and integrity. His ideology is autobiography.
And in recent weeks Mr. McCain has been redefining his personal and party duty. The senator was once a genuine policy maverick, tacking left and right. But this year his heresy has all been to Mr. Bush's left, where a 2004 challenge might be possible.
He criticizes the Bush tax cut whenever he's asked, echoing liberal lines about the rich. He's negotiating with Democrats to revive gun control, an issue even Al Gore gave up on last year.
Mr. McCain also has signed up with Ted Kennedy and the trial lawyers on HMO regulation, even as other Republicans defer to Mr. Bush. The president was able to persuade House Republican Charles Norwood to back off his own trial-lawyer bill to allow a chance for a better compromise now that a Republican holds the White House.
But when Mr. Bush announced his HMO "principles" yesterday, Mr. McCain stole time from his campaign-finance crusade to join Teddy in a press-conference protest. "His support is very important and powerful," Mr. Kennedy enthused.
But the best evidence that he's trying to roll over Mr. Bush is Mr. McCain's behavior on campaign finance. His best friend in the Senate, Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel, has put a sincere, bipartisan alternative on the table. Mr. Bush has applauded the concept, if not every detail. Yet Mr. McCain has dismissed his pal's effort as "not in the middle of anything."
The Hagel bill is in fact a classic compromise. It would trade new limits ($60,000) on unregulated soft money to parties in return for increases in hard-money limits (to $3,000). Political-speech purists -- including this columnist -- don't agree with much of it. (I like the Virginia system, which requires disclosure but allows unlimited donations.)
But members of both parties support Mr. Hagel's effort, and at least he'd improve the current system. The single biggest obstacle to political challengers today is the $1,000 hard-money limit. There's also no doubt Mr. Hagel would restrict the large corporate and labor donations that Mr. McCain insists are so "corrupting."
If the Arizonan really wanted a bipartisan deal, he'd at least negotiate with his friend. Mr. McCain's public objection -- that the Hagel bill would "legalize" the soft-money loophole -- is bizarre. Bill Clinton long ago "legalized" it in practice if not in law.
This week Mr. McCain has also agreed time and again with Big Labor. That includes the simple disclosure of forced union dues he'd endorsed only last year. Republican Orrin Hatch threw in corporate disclosure to sweeten the deal, but Mr. McCain still balked.
And this week he met privately with John Sweeney, the AFL-CIO boss who opposes parts of the McCain bill. The senator knows many Democrats will abandon the bill if unions give the word. So it'll be fascinating to watch if he now bends to Mr. Sweeney, even as he refuses to budge on Mr. Hagel.
Mr. McCain may also have become a hostage of his own favorable press coverage. The media have made him a rare Senate star because he agrees with them on campaign finance. If he breaks with them now, even in the cause of getting something done, he'll lose his public halo.
Asked about all this, Mr. McCain's aides admit he's trying to muscle his bill through the Senate. But they dismiss talk of 2004 as "Bush paranoia." Their man is 64 years old and a loyal Republican. The most any of them will concede is that the threat of his running may work for him the way it did for the Joe Pesci figure in "Goodfellas"; he's scarier because he's so unpredictable. ("Funny? What do you mean I'm funny?")
The McCainiacs do have a point that Mr. Bush hasn't tried his legendary charm on his old campaign foe. The pair's only postinaugural chat was by all accounts stiff, even "weird," says one Bush aide. McCain aides also say he wants to help Mr. Bush on military reform and Social Security, not that he's yet told the White House.
Mr. McCain no doubt thinks he's made his last presidential run. But politics has a momentum of its own. The Bush-McCain relationship now resembles that of the great powers in Europe in 1914, with armies and mistrust equally abundant. One spark, and who knows?
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