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Smith felt he had found a soul mate in the disillusioned, fictional Mr. Smith as played by Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." So, pinching some melodrama from the syrupy film, the real Mr. Smith re-created a tour of the monuments, just like the fictional Mr. Smith took towards the end of the film.

He went to the Jefferson Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery where his parents are buried. He got to the Lincoln Memorial where, again, he recalled the 1939 Frank Capra film.

"There's a lot of fancy words around this town," Smith would later say, paraphrasing the fictitious Mr. Smith, whose disgust with Washington deal-making and image-furbishing Bob Smith feels mirrors his own. "Some of them are carved in stone. And some of them are put there so suckers like me can read them."

Eventually Smith found his way to the Senate chamber where, to a capacity crowd of spectators (if not senators), he decried a party more concerned with winning elections than with the ideals carved in its platform, and he officially resigned from the GOP. Smith insists his announcement has nothing to do with the publicity spike this gives to his stalled bid for president, with his standings in most polls measured in negative numbers. But Smith's move today left political insiders completely baffled and largely unconvinced.

"Everybody thinks it's a mistake," says a Republican official. "Everybody thinks he's lost his mind. He votes 98 percent of the time with the Republican Party; if his views differed more, I'd understand. I view the Republican Party as a party that is conservative in principle and philosophy yet diverse in its membership. We're working very hard not to be seen as extremists -- which is exactly what the left wants to paint us as. Social issues [like abortion] play an important role in our party, but they're not the consuming interest of our party. Bob Smith and Gary Bauer are playing into the left's hands by acting like extremists."

Bottom line, says the Republican official, is that Smith's presidential campaign is lackluster, and the Republican Senate leadership has a different agenda than he does. "He's not getting attention, so he's going to take his marbles and leave."

"I thought it was all very odd," confides one Democratic senator. "It doesn't seem to accomplish his objectives. There are plenty of Republicans within his own party who agree with him. As a Democrat, I've walked into caucus meetings and thought, 'My God, this is not my place.' But you don't leave. You try to change things from within."

"On the other hand," the senator jokes, "he never has to go to those very boring and wasteful caucus lunches ever again."

There are a lot of meetings Smith is going to miss. His status among his formerly fellow Republicans is in doubt. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott announced that the Senate Republican Conference would meet either Wednesday or Thursday of this week to decide what role, if any, Smith would play in the conference, and whether or not he would be stripped of his chairmanship of the Senate Ethics Committee.

Next page | Boy Scout as negative campaigner