Last week John McCain was back in Charleston, still having the time of his life. But everything else had changed. He’d just crushed George Bush by 19 points in the New Hampshire primary, and had vaulted into the lead in the run-up to next week’s South Carolina Republican primary. Locals came streaming across a muddy construction site on the Cooper River to catch a glimpse of the rock star of politics. There were schoolboys in white shirts and rep ties, and potbellied veterans in ice-cream hats. There were housewives with baby strollers, and businesswomen with briefcases. There were construction workers waving flags from rooftops, and college students clutching copies of McCain’s autobiography like sacred missals on the way to mass. On a sun-swept day, with the USS Yorktown anchored behind him and old Fort Sumter in the distance, McCain stood on the deck of the Maritime Center. “You have my solemn promise,” he said, the river wind whipping the tail of his navy blue sports coat. “I will always tell you the truth, no matter what.”
You can’t get any hotter than this in politics. At least for now, at least in early primaries, McCain seems to have found something deep and defining in the electorate. Voters are by and large on Easy Street, but they’re tired of Bill Clinton’s Big Easy. A quarter century ago, the depredations of Richard Nixon begat Jimmy Carter, who promised never to lie and to “give the government back to the people.” Now John McCain–and Bill Bradley–are running on the same theme, hoping to succeed another president with a shaky grasp of the truth. “There’s something out there we’re trying to tap into,” said Bradley campaign manager Gina Glantz. “Can it take you all the way? I don’t know, but it can take you far.”
McCain’s Big Mo cuts across party lines. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, he runs neck and neck in test matches against both Bradley and Vice President Al Gore. What’s more interesting is the way McCain does it: with substantial support from Democrats and independents. In polls and on the Internet, the senator from Arizona is drawing the interest of what might be called “McCain Democrats,” middle-of-the-roaders who are turned off by Clinton and who like McCain’s social tolerance and pay-down-the-debt message of sacrifice and service. “I can’t stand Clinton, and I like the way McCain stood up to Pat Buchanan,” said Samuel Tenenbaum, a longtime Democratic activist in Columbia, S.C. “I met with McCain and said: ‘I’m for you’.”
But can McCain ride the wave all the way to the Republican nomination? He has a focused message, a compelling life story, money pouring in over the Internet, a terrific staff and a plan to defeat Bush in enough early states–New Hampshire, South Carolina, Arizona and Michigan–to bloody the Texas governor before the campaign can go “national” in early March.
It won’t be easy. Running as an outsider, McCain still has to answer for his Washington career. Bush has more money, more party backing–and a new sense of urgency. For the first time in his charmed life, George W’s back is to the wall. The scion of a fiercely competitive family, the namesake of a former president, he remains a formidable, perhaps now even desperate, foe. He is expected to win the primary in Delaware this week, though Steve Forbes is spending heavily there. There’s enough time, Bush strategists think, to turn things around. “These red-hot candidacies tend to fizzle,” said Bush media adviser Stuart Stevens. “They’re celebrating now. Let’s see who’s celebrating by the time we get to April.”
Still, Bush has fallen behind in South Carolina, where he is no longer viewed as the inevitable nominee or the man best prepared to be president. “No one’s jumped ship yet,” said one of Bush’s top supporters in Washington. “But if things continue to deteriorate, there will be enormous pressure on Bush to get out of the race.”
As surprising as it seems, McCain’s Mutiny is no accident. It’s the work of a driven and indefatigable campaigner with a knack for appearing far less calculating than he really is. He had a game plan, but a nothing-to-lose attitude to hide it. McCain is a third-generation Annapolis man, the son and grandson of admirals. His strategic model, though, isn’t Admiral Mahan, it’s Ho Chi Minh–with the Bush Team in the role of the beleaguered U.S. Army. Wherever Bush goes in the “early” primary states, his opponent has already been–often. McCain made his first political foray into Charleston, for example, two years ago. He signed up as his state cochairman the popular local congressman, Mark Sanford–who happens to share McCain’s passion for campaign reform and paying down the federal debt. “I like George Bush, but I never heard from him,” said Sanford. “In this business, you have to ask for the order. John did.”
Like Jimmy Carter, McCain invented a new route to stardom. In 1976, Carter turned the Iowa caucuses, until then obscure events, into his launching pad. McCain’s version of Iowa: the media. He’s worked the precincts of the press corps like an Irish pol in Southie on St. Patrick’s Day, offering his near-obsessive candor and availability to reporters reared in an era of antagonism between the media and the politicians. “You guys sold out for a box of doughnuts and a bus ride,” groused one Bush insider in Austin. The governor of Texas is friendly enough, but wary of the press–a trait he inherited from his parents.
Good candidates–or at least lucky ones–are able to tailor their message on the fly. McCain started with his crusade to reform campaign-finance laws as well as using his own life story as a call to a new spirit of public service. When Bush moved to the right with a big tax-cut proposal, McCain went the other way, and began championing a plan to pay down the federal debt. It fit nicely into his theme of service and sacrifice: the baby boomers never fought in Nam, but at least they could leave their children with lower interest payments on what the government had borrowed on their behalf.
Bush vows a fight to the finish. The morning after New Hampshire he huddled with his top aides. The mood was glum but businesslike. Their decision: no more Mr. Nice Guy. The do-or-die battleground: South Carolina. Waves of GOP senators and governors are expected to descend on the state this week, talking up Bush and talking down McCain; meanwhile, the campaign and its allies will lay down an advertising barrage. They will depict McCain as a Democrat-loving, hypocritical denizen of the Beltway–soft on abortion, soft on tax cuts–who can’t be trusted because the Yankees (and the Big Media) love him.
Bush is taking grave risks. Rule No. 1 of campaigning is to define yourself clearly in “positive” terms to voters before you attack your foe. Rule No. 2 is to let someone else do the attacking if you can. Bush doesn’t have enough time to follow either dictum. Last week he had no choice but to go after McCain himself. McCain, Bush said, was a Beltway buckraker, not the apostle of campaign reform that he claims to be. McCain, Bush pointed out, is staging a $500-a-ticket reception at Washington’s Willard Hotel this week–and many of the attendees will be lobbyists for industries regulated by the Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain chairs. “I’m not letting Senator McCain get away with this Washington double-talk,” Bush said during an impromptu “media avail” at a charter academy in Detroit. “He has been in Washington long enough to earn a very important committee chairmanship. He has used that position skillfully to forward his campaign.”
Bravely–or stupidly–Bush attacked McCain’s standing among vets, 450,000 of whom live in South Carolina. At a rally, a Bush supporter claimed McCain “forgot” about veterans once he returned from a POW prison in Hanoi. That prompted a ferocious reply–not directly from McCain, but from a bipartisan coalition of Vietnam vets in the Senate (three of them Democrats).
Other attacks are on the way. Bush, facing a challenge from the left he didn’t anticipate, is suddenly fashioning himself a savior of the Bible belt. Arriving in Greenville, he was greeted by 5,000 Christian students at Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist institution that bars interracial dating and bans visits by gay alumni. Bush and his wife, Laura, were introduced as “sweet spirits who love the Lord.” The Bush Team will work the upstate Bible belt the old-fashioned way: with radio and direct mail. In one radio ad, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Bush campaign will say that the McCain tax plan will adversely affect charitable deductions–in other words, the financial health of your local church.
It all seems vaguely out of character for Bush, who genuinely wanted to run an upbeat campaign and who, in any case, is a novice at the nasty stuff. More important, his attacks may be out of sync–almost antique–in an increasingly cosmopolitan state like South Carolina, with its new factories and high-tech offices. Charleston now attracts Yankees, many of them retired officers in search of the more mannered world that Pat Conroy made famous–and McCain seems to embody.
Even so, Bush is planning to make his stand there. Aides said he would return to South Carolina on Tuesday–with no definite plans to leave until Primary Day. In the meantime, he retreated to Austin to rest and be with his family. A candidate who prefers a moderate schedule and a good night’s sleep (he travels with his favorite pillow), Bush, one friend said, seemed dazed and tired. As for McCain, he was moving fast, hitting California, Arizona, Michigan and then back to South Carolina–where the Straight Talk Express is now a caravan.
