Changing the Script

By Michael Scherer

Never mind all those maps of red and blue America, a nation polarized between Democrat and Republican, city and country, with entire elections teetering on the last-minute decisions of a few Ohio soccer moms. Forget what you know about the inaccessible general-election candidate, hidden behind layers of Secret Service and stage-managed pomp. Scratch those notions of a Republican Party that sidles up to pharmaceutical companies and oil giants, never ruffling the paymasters' feathers.

With much of the attention focused on the unprecedented photo finish of a woman and an African American in the Democratic primaries, it's easy to underestimate how much a Republican challenger could change the political playing field. If John McCain has his way in the coming campaign, the party of Ronald Reagan will shift its priorities on key domestic issues ranging from global warming to the cheap importation of prescription drugs. Despite the pressures of a national campaign, the candidate will remain open to the public and press, continuing the regular town halls and reporter gabfests, often in traditionally Democratic bastions. And the campaign will attempt to make inroads with independent voters in states that the electoral map has long counted as beyond Republican reach.

Does this sound too good to be true? McCain is, as he often admits, a superstitious fellow who depends on talismans for good luck--the penny he carries in his pocket or that rubber band strapped around his left wrist. As it stands, he is still too busy attempting to convince his party and its conservative base that he is not to be feared. Witness his latest endorsement road show: Mitt Romney in Boston, George H.W. Bush in Houston and a bunch of big-name Republican Representatives in Washington. These are the moves of a man still speaking to his party's base.

But behind the scenes, the McCain team is already thinking about how to win in a general election. "We will certainly try to remind voters of his independence and his reputation as a reformer," says Charlie Black, a senior McCain adviser and leading Republican lobbyist. "His positions on the issues, which he certainly won't change, do change the Republican stereotypes."

In recent days, McCain met with his advisers at his ranch, near Sedona, Ariz., to plot a strategy that will keep alive what the campaign sees as its magic: the face-to-face charm that reinvigorated the 71-year-old candidate after his campaign imploded last summer. It is a strategy calling for more bus tours and large group discussions with voters. It also calls for a concerted effort to court voters outside the Republican base--a Barack Obama-like gambit that is already seeping into McCain's public rhetoric.

"I will not confine myself to the comfort of speaking only to those who agree with me," he said after winning the Virginia, Maryland and District of Columbia primaries. "I will make my case to all the people." Nearly a week later, he was even more direct about his aims: "We'll be competing everywhere, including the state of California."

Here McCain was telegraphing a message about the kind of candidate he wants to be. Not just any Republican can play in California. President George W. Bush failed miserably there in 2000 and 2004; so did Bob Dole in 1996 and Bush's father in 1992. But they were mostly dealing from the old Republican deck, fashioned most recently by Bush strategist Karl Rove--jazz up the base, hammer the opposition.

McCain plans to bring new cards to the table--his unconventional campaign style combined with a set of issues that appeal to the political center. He wants to regulate greenhouse gases. He opposes drilling for oil in the Arctic, voted to fund stem-cell research and has a history of fighting against the corrosive influence of money in politics. He initially voted against the Bush tax cuts, which he now supports, saying at the time that they "mostly benefit the wealthy." To this day, he does not favor an absolute repeal of the estate tax. Despite a full-blown rebellion in the Republican grass roots, he remains committed to providing a path to citizenship for most illegal immigrants in the U.S.

"We always thought that if he could survive a primary, he would be a phenomenal general-election candidate," says John Weaver, McCain's onetime political strategist, who broke with the campaign last summer. "The Democrats will be on the defensive if John runs the kind of campaign that I know he wants to run."

The Democratic Party and its allies, of course, see the danger that lies ahead. Despite an enormous enthusiasm advantage that Democrats have enjoyed for a year, national head-to-head polls show Obama with only a single-digit lead over McCain; McCain and Clinton are tied. More important, McCain retains a favorable rating, according to USA Today/Gallup, that stands a full 13 points ahead of the Republican Party. Those close to him see a real shot at picking up longtime blue states on the West Coast (Oregon and Washington), the Midwest (Minnesota and Wisconsin) and New England (Maine and Connecticut).

So the Democratic Party has begun flooding reporters with "myth buster" e-mails arguing that McCain is "pandering to the right wing," "walking in lockstep with President Bush" and "embracing the ideology he once denounced." At the same time, the liberal advocacy group Media Matters has been releasing broadsides against any journalist who dares describe the sometimes maverick McCain as a maverick.

At the heart of the coming debate with Democrats is the war in Iraq, for which McCain is the nation's most public proponent outside the White House. Democrats, including Clinton and Obama, hope to focus the debate on the past, on the mistakes that have been made and the cost in blood and treasure, which most Americans disapprove of. McCain, on the other hand, is determined to focus the debate on what to do next, about which the Democratic candidates have remained remarkably vague beyond saying they want to promptly begin a drawdown in forces. "I believe I can convince the American people that after nearly four years of mishandling of the war, that we're now doing the right thing and we're succeeding," McCain told ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

But far more than on the issues, McCain's fortunes will depend on his ability to preserve his aura of independence and his enthusiasm for the campaign trail. For him, the lessons of his campaign's collapse and rebirth could not be clearer. If his personality gets lost in the process, as it did last spring, he is done. But if he can run as an individual, unafraid of jousting with reporters and voters, he may find he's rewarded not just in votes but in his own satisfaction. "I love it," he often says of campaigning. His close friend and adviser South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham puts it a different way. "The hard part," Graham says, "will be getting him to stop campaigning." n

TIME POLL

How McCain Matches Up If the general election were being held today between John McCain (R) and Barack Obama (D), for whom would you vote?

Obama 48% McCain 41%

If the general election were being held today between John McCain (R) and Hillary Clinton (D), for whom would you vote?

Clinton 46% McCain 46%

This TIME poll was conducted Feb. 1-4 among 958 randomly selected registered voters, including people who were leaning toward a particular candidate. The margin of error is +-3 percentage points.

With reporting by Ana Marie Cox/Washington