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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/8/2003 10:21 AM (GMT -6) |   | This is an interesting evaluation of how the Dems candidates don't seem to have the luster of McCain or the ability to attract independents. It also points out how rare it is for a politician to be able to work with people from both parties thanks to the level of acrimony in our politics.
dlw
How to Be the McCain of '04, by John McCain
October 8, 2003
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - Some days, it seems as if every
Democrat running for president is vying to be the next John
McCain.
John Edwards, now a Washington insider, plays the outsider.
John Kerry, Vietnam veteran, stresses foreign affairs.
Joseph I. Lieberman antagonizes party loyalists. Howard
Dean bucks the establishment. Richard A. Gephardt hits
populist themes. Wesley K. Clark promotes his military
record. Each wants, desperately, to repeat Senator McCain's
stunning victory in the Republican primary in New Hampshire
in 2000.
From his perch in the Senate, the real McCoy, er, McCain,
watches this parade of Democratic imitators with quiet
bemusement. To those who would emulate his tactics and
style, he offers the kind of plain talk that helped
catapult him, albeit briefly, to the head of the Republican
pack.
"I'm flattered," Mr. McCain said simply. "And of course,
I'm also entertained, by the fact that they seem to ignore
the reality that I lost."
Until now, Mr. McCain, the Arizona Republican whose
political attraction rests, in part, on a biography that
includes more than five years as a prisoner of war in
Vietnam, has assiduously avoided sharing his views about
the 2004 presidential race. He is friendly with Senators
Kerry, Edwards and Lieberman - all of whom, he said, have
occasionally sought his advice - and does not want to
appear to take sides.
But for nearly an hour last week, the senator sat in his
sun-dappled office and reflected on elections past and
future, assessing the Democratic field as well as the man
whose ride to the White House he once hoped to derail,
President Bush.
The Democratic contenders, Mr. McCain said, have had a hard
time differentiating themselves, and he does not see any
appealing to the same independent voters he did. He did
have a tip for how they might break out of the pack: skip
the Iowa caucuses, as he did, and focus on New Hampshire.
The senator also had words of caution for the newest
entrant in the race, General Clark.
"People will come and listen to you on the basis of what
you've done for the country," Mr. McCain said, twirling a
pen in his left hand as he spoke. "But they only will vote
for you on the basis of what they believe you will do for
the country."
Of all the Democrats, Dr. Dean, who has generated huge
crowds and whipped up enthusiasm among those who say they
have felt left out of the political process, is perhaps the
most often compared to Mr. McCain. But the comparison seems
to irk the senator, who said Dr. Dean's national security
positions "are way out of the mainstream."
For instance, Mr. McCain cited Dr. Dean's remark that "the
ends do not justify the means," in reference to the death
of Saddam Hussein's sons.
"I was astounded," the senator said. "The ends were to get
rid of two murdering rapist thugs and the means was the use
of American military intelligence."
The comparison to Dr. Dean came up a few weeks ago, when
Mr. McCain, who is up for re-election in 2004, was in
Seattle for a fund-raiser with a small group of his
supporters.
Rick Davis, Mr. McCain's former campaign manager, who was
at the fund-raiser recalled the senator asking whether Dr.
Dean had drawn in McCain backers. "None of our people are
particularly interested in Dean," Mr. Davis said. "I think
that was sort of an eye-opener for John."
Though his friends say he has never really patched up
relations with President Bush after their acrimonious 2000
campaign, Mr. McCain pledged to campaign for the president
and said he would be a co-chairman for the Bush re-election
effort in Arizona. Last week, as the Senate debated an $87
billion emergency spending measure for postwar Iraq and
Afghanistan, Mr. McCain emerged as one of Mr. Bush's
staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill.
Even so, Mr. McCain was pointed in his criticism of the
White House, leaving the distinct impression that his
support for Mr. Bush's re-election stems less from
enthusiasm for the president than from a desire to be a
good Republican soldier.
"I'm not sure he's on the wrong course as perhaps at least
not enough on the right course," Mr. McCain said of Mr.
Bush, after ticking off a list of things he would do were
he in the president's shoes. The list included announcing
that tax cuts would not be made permanent, renewing a
commitment to free trade and going "back on national
television" to make a strong case for rebuilding Iraq.
"I think he needs to do those things," Mr. McCain said, "to
provide the kind of leadership that people will have
confidence in."
Such remarks are vintage McCain: blunt and revealing of a
politician's ego.
"He came pretty close to upsetting a guy with all the money
and all the governors and all the infrastructure," said
Senator Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican and a good
friend of Mr. McCain's, "and there surely is not a day that
goes by that he doesn't think, `If I was in that situation
as president, I think I could do a better job.' "
There have long been mavericks in presidential politics;
John Anderson and Ross Perot leap to mind. But at a time
when the country is becoming more polarized, Mr. McCain is
one of the most prominent politicians who draws support
across party lines.
Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform,
deemed Mr. McCain irrelevant, calling him "yesterday's
news." But William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard,
a conservative magazine, praised Mr. McCain as "a great
ally of the White House on Iraq."
Bruce D. Merrill, a pollster and professor of mass
communications at Arizona State University, sees Mr. McCain
as the kind of candidate Americans yearn for but will not
elect. "The way the rules work," Mr. Merrill said, "it's
still the ideologues who control the nomination process. If
John McCain could have gotten the nomination, he would have
been elected president."
But Mr. McCain could not get the nomination, a fact that is
not lost on him or his supporters as they watch what John
Weaver, Mr. McCain's political strategist in 2000, called
the "authenticity grab" by Democrats trying to cloak
themselves in the mantle of Mr. McCain.
"I think he feels like he's in a girdle, or he's
constrained," said one person close to Mr. McCain. "He sees
a White House that he has domestic and foreign policy
differences with, and then he sees candidates who he
believes he's a better candidate than they are."
If Mr. McCain believes that about the Democrats, he did not
say, though he did say he sees them all "trying very hard
to somehow strike a chord." He declined to list strengths
and weaknesses, and he steered especially clear of talking
about his friends Senators Kerry and Edwards and Lieberman.
He said they call on him for advice now and then. "They
don't ask, `What do you think I should do on such and such
an issue?' " he said. "It's sort of, `How am I doing
tactically?' Or they ask me, `What do you think about
Arizona?' "
Mr. McCain confessed to feeling an occasional twinge that
the 2004 race is unfolding without him, and his eyes came
alive when he talked of his own presidential campaign,
which he described as "the most enjoyable experience of my
life." The memories are still fresh, from the early town
hall meeting in New Hampshire where "20 people showed up
and we gave away free ice cream" to arriving by boat into
the port in Bremerton, Wash., with 5,000 people waiting for
him in the rain and the cold.
Yet Mr. McCain does not sound interested in a second bid
for the White House. He shook his head when asked why he
was not running as an independent this year and said he had
no intention to run in 2008.
As the interview drew to a close, Mr. McCain pointed out a
bust of his hero, Theodore Roosevelt, who famously ran as
an independent and lost. Then he was asked what he thought
the headline for the story should be. He replied, not
skipping a beat, "Gone but not forgotten."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/08/politics/08MCCA.html?ex=1066636639&ei=1&en=f297bb1ba73866dc | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 10/10/2003 12:34 PM (GMT -6) | | | DLW: I'm reading Tucker Carlson's book and his take McCain is excellant and very funny. Check it out if you get a chance. | | Back to Top | | |
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