McCain's Next Battle

By James Carney

When George W. Bush swept into Washington last week, the Republican Party establishment threw itself at his feet. Thirty-six G.O.P. Senators, 100 Congressmen and 2,000 well-tailored donors, many of them lobbyists, all paid homage to the Texas Governor--a capital reception so warm and so lucrative that even the composed candidate seemed caught up in the hype. To the fawning Congressmen he gushed, "I look forward to working with you," as though he had already been elected President. And he has reason to be cocky. By the end of this week, he will have raised more than $20 million--as much as all his G.O.P. rivals combined--in less than four months.

But could there be a downside to Bush's embrace by his party's leaders--and by the corporate special interests who lobby them? Arizona Senator John McCain, Bush's rival for the G.O.P. nomination, is counting on it. While Bush was being hailed by the political-financial complex, McCain was plotting to blow it up. The Senator has made his name in politics, in part, by pounding his head against the wall of campaign-finance reform. So far, his efforts have been thwarted by his Republican colleagues in Congress. But this week McCain will launch the battle from a different perch, in a campaign speech at the old town hall in Bedford, N.H., the state holding the first presidential primary.

The moment will be poignant, even as some may try to dismiss it as pointless. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who has led the three-year fight against McCain's bill, loves to say, "This issue has never defeated anyone in the American political process." Nor has it ever launched a presidential campaign. Back in January even McCain's top advisers hoped to persuade him that campaign-finance reform was a loser issue. They quietly commissioned a poll of G.O.P. voters in four key primary states to prove their point. But when the results came in, they showed 60% of voters saying campaign-finance reform was important, vs. just 15% saying it wasn't. "Voters want the system changed," says John Weaver, McCain's political director.

Bush, for his part, bemoans the culture of partisanship and gridlock in Washington but is mostly silent about the system that funds it. He proposes lifting the $1,000 limit on individual contributions and requiring full disclosure of contributors. But, says McCain, "that's basically the system we have today. The restrictions we have now are a facade." The Senator's current plan, in his McCain-Feingold bill, would ban the unlimited contributions known as "soft money" that corporations, lobbyists and unions can give to national parties, and it would restrict outside, allegedly "independent" groups from running ads to help specific candidates.

But for McCain's reform plan to resonate with grass-roots Republicans, he must pitch it in explicitly conservative terms. "You're never going to get a simpler, flatter tax code unless you reform the way we finance our campaigns," McCain says. "And you're never going to get rid of pork-barrel spending and make government smaller until you remove the special interests that dominate our political process." Sources close to McCain say he and his co-sponsor, Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, will threaten to bring Senate business to a halt this month unless G.O.P. leaders bring up the bill for debate and a vote.

If nothing else, that ought to train a spotlight on McCain and give him a chance to stand as the Washington-based outsider against the Austin-based insider. In a two-person primary race, McCain hopes his personal story will implicitly carry a critique of Bush's. At the age of 40, Bush was still finding himself in Midland, Texas; McCain had already served as a naval aviator in the Vietnam War and endured 5 1/2 years of hell as a prisoner of war. And while Bush has used his father's name and connections to get ahead in business and politics, McCain turned down paternal protection when it mattered most. As the son of the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet during the war, he resisted pressure from his North Vietnamese captors to go free because he feared it would demoralize the troops.

Not surprisingly, that compelling story is making its way to voters and bookstores very soon. The campaign has sent about 50,000 biographical videos to primary voters in New Hampshire. And in September, McCain will launch a book tour promoting Faith of My Fathers, a three-generation biography of his father and his grandfather--both admirals--and the lessons of honor and patriotism they taught him. If the tale catches on, Bush may wish to change the subject--even to campaign-finance reform.