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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (13784)	3/3/2000 12:10:00 PM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Here's more insight into McCain, why it's all just about him. I read that he wants to remake the GOP in his image, whatever that is: . "I am struck by the evolution of John McCain from fairly conventional, anti-government Republican into something else," said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. What exactly that "something else" would be should it reach the White House is not clear, Mann added, but he declared: "I am not confident that he would embrace the distinctively conservative record he built in the Senate."http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64203-2000Mar2.html And from Peggy Noonan: ...Now John McCain, in his attempt to become heir to Ronald Reagan, has fired a shot into the heart of the coalition Ronald Reagan built, the one composed of Northern ethnics, Southern Protestants, union members, Catholics and entrepreneurs, among others. Why did he do it? Because the attack promised to play well in certain quarters; because certain Christian activists don't like him, have worked against him and don't see things as he does.... ....Mr. McCain is not substantive and serious on the stump, he is biographical, and talks politics, not policy. He gives the impression of being philosophically unmoored; one senses he knows why he is in politics but not why he believes what he believes, or even whether he believes it. His politics seem an expression of the reflexive Republicanism of the Sun Belt, or of the military. Conservatives know that all the establishments that surround presidents -- Washington society, the media, pollsters and political professionals -- tend to push Republicans leftward. A Republican has to be strong to stand firm in the pushing wind, and politicians are never that strong unless they have serious, heartfelt convictions, grounded in philosophy. 'Infer the Best' To an extraordinary degree, Mr. McCain has been the candidate of inference. You listen to him, and infer things from his statements. You infer his beliefs -- that he's against abortion, for instance, but not unchangeably so, that he is for openness and tolerance. There was political danger for McCain in this -- no one ever carried a placard that said "Infer the best -- vote for Jones." But there was a political plus in it, too. Many voters have come to believe that philosophy is ideology and ideology is bad. "Vote McCain -- you can't really predict his actions from his stated beliefs" or "Vote McCain -- so much of life is situational" might sound funny to some people, but not to everybody.... interactive.wsj.com