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"Scam" ads the norm Trail Mix: Hillary haters spam cyberspace Gunning for the center Democrats make Hillary legit The blundering pundit Don Giuliani Campaign video: |
McCain's winning roadshow | page 1, 2, 3 But on Thursday, at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Nashua, Bush tried to pick the Republican Party wound caused by some of McCain's more maverick stances -- like, say, on campaign-finance reform. Intimating that McCain's emphasis on saving Social Security and paying down the debt is at stark odds with the GOP mantra of tax cuts, Bush compared McCain with Gore and President Clinton. "When the Republicans go into the booth in New Hampshire and around the country, it's important to nominate somebody who will be able to debate the Democratic nominees on key issues, not mimic them," Bush said. "When he said his tax plan was similar to President Clinton's tax plan, it made it real clear the difference of opinion on taxes."
McCain sat back and took it for a day or two —- until it became clear that such a charge had the potential to take hold. He argues that Republicans believe in his plan over Bush's - and polls back this up -- and maintains that humongous tax cuts are anachronistic Republican politics. "Bad generals always fight the last war," he says. But now, because of Bush's charges, he begins his remarks at town meetings by explaining his point of view on taxes, indicating a certain degree of defensiveness. In some ways, McCain has himself to blame for the perception that he may on occasion lean left. When gun activists ask him if he "supports the Second Amendment," he says that he does, but then talks up basic gun proposals, like background checks and the development of smart guns. He has a 17-year pro-life voting record, but when he was asked by a reporter what he would do if his 15-year-old daughter Meghan got pregnant, he said, "The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel," though he soon "clarified" this answer with a more pro-life spin. (To be fair, Bush is similarly squishy on abortion; the difference is that he has reassured Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson behind closed doors -- and gotten them off his back.) Additionally, McCain's tax cut is targeted at low- and middle-income wage earners, and his support for campaign-finance reform has made him the enemy of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and the chief reform foe, Kentucky's Sen. Mitch McConnell. And, perhaps worst of all, McCain is beloved by the media. And it is not an unreciprocated love. In another life, one McCain staffer told me, the candidate would have been a journalist, a Hemingway wannabe with a laptop in one hand and a machete in the other. In conversation, he mentions New York Times op-eds he's liked and his wish that the Washington Post was more widely available in his travels. As candidates like Bob Dole and Orrin Hatch sprinkled their ill-conceived speeches with Senate esoterica like "mark-up" and "subcommittee," McCain is all media and pop culture panache, easily referencing Sam Donaldson, Danny DeVito, Tom Cruise, Tom Brokaw and "Saving Private Ryan." The 25 New England newspapers that have endorsed him -- including, in an unprecedented move, both the liberal Boston Globe and the conservative Boston Herald -- clearly mean more to him than the legislators and party hacks Bush has lined up. He pokes fun at his own media pandering. He points to us at rallies and calls us "Trotskyites" and "pinko Commies." At a packed event in Derry attended by Brokaw, he urged the crowd to confront that particular "Commie pinko" and ask him about the news media's liberal bias. He invents tawdry gossip about us, telling Don Imus that the New York Times' Alison Mitchell has a sprinkled-doughnut addiction (not true). And just Sunday he announced to the rest of the pack that a certain Internet journalist comes on the bus reeking of alcohol fumes and gets off of it in search of a bottle of Scotch. (Also not true.) And we love it. Not just because he's accessible and generally straightforward (or at least forthright about his evasiveness). Or because he's a war hero, or because he knows more about foreign policy than most of us could ever know. But because he's basically just a cool dude and a nice, friendly guy and that, among the current crop of both Republicans and Democrats, makes him unique.
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