`Straight Talker' Puts Spin on Bush

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 6, 2000 | by Sheila R. Cherry, | Diana Ray

Will the votes of crossover Democrats and independents in key states have enough impact to trip George W. Bush and seize the GOP nomination for Arizona Sen. John McCain?

Are Democrats and independents nervous that Vice President Al Gore may be a tad cavalier with the truth? Are they concerned about former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley's heart arrhythmia? Maybe they're worried that there might not be much of a Democratic candidate left over to defeat a Republican challenger once Gore and Bradley finish with each other.

Whatever it is, polls are showing Democrats and many independents have developed a keen interest in the Republican presidential primary, especially the fate of Arizona Sen. John McCain. That is making some of McCain's fellow Republicans edgy. Indeed these GOP observers tell Insight they are wondering whether the votes of crossover Democrats and independents in key states might have enough impact to trip Texas Gov. George W. Bush and seize the Republican presidential nomination -- as when Dwight Eisenhower, previously unknown as a Republican, so narrowly defeated "Mr. Republican," Ohio Sen. Robert Taft, at the 1952 GOP convention.

Bradley needs a positive, galvanizing moment, such as the one McCain had in New Hampshire, according to President Clinton's former secretary of labor Robert B. Reich in a New York Times interview. "Bradley is better positioned than McCain in terms of money and people on the ground. But he's not nearly as well positioned in terms of a galvanizing event. Insurgent movements have to be built around surges; that's the only thing they have," says Reich. In a town as partisan as Washington has become, a liberal Democrat publicly using the campaign strategies of a Republican as a model may seem odd.

A cursory glance at McCain's voting record yields few clues as to what endears him to the left. The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League and the League of Conservation Voters in 1998 and Handgun Control Inc. in 1993-94 reported that McCain voted with their preferred positions no more than 10 percent of the time, according to political junkie.com.

McCain and fellow presidential contender Bush, who until McCain's victory in the New Hampshire primary was the presumed front-runner, have been trying to one-up each other's conservative credentials since the start of the campaign. But others have sent different signals.

In November, President Clinton gave McCain a boost with Democrats and independents with the unsolicited advice that Bush should not write off McCain's challenge for the GOP nod. Clinton predicted, "I don't think Senator McCain is out of this yet. I think he's a very credible alternative."

Part of McCain's attraction to some Democrats may stem from his increasing willingness to cross the aisle to provide support for Democratic issues, such as changes in the campaign-finance laws and antitobacco legislation.

Clinton touted the campaign-finance changes that McCain cosponsored with Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin during his 1997 State of the Union address. The president declared that the McCain-Feingold bill would "curb spending, reduce the role of special interests, create a level playing field between challengers and incumbents and ban contributions from noncitizens, all corporate sources and the other large soft-money contributions that both parties receive."

Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal explains Clinton's affinity for McCain this way: "For much of 1998 and 1999, McCain was Clinton's favorite Republican because he gave Democrats bipartisan cover on campaign-finance reform and on raising tobacco taxes. So, instead of pointing only to Democrats, Clinton got to point at McCain and say, `See, this is bipartisan,' -- even though you could fit the Republican support in a phone booth."

In an October 1997 press release, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts chided his GOP opponents for launching a "massive onslaught of campaign ads" allegedly to protect the continuation of political contributions from big tobacco companies, large corporations, the National Rifle Association and other so-called specialinterests. "We must move beyond this partisan assault on American workers and enact real campaign-finance reform. We have the opportunity in the McCain-Feingold bill," continued the release.

So how does a self-proclaimed conservative Republican draw such endorsements from Democratic liberals? New York Daily News liberal political writer Lars-Erik Nelson says it's McCain's open personality and sense of humor, coupled with the fact that he has taken on the special interests with campaign-finance reform. "I've been here for 25 years and I've never seen money as powerful as now. I disagree with him on a lot of small issues, but the big things -- the campaign-finance issue -- that trumps all the other issues," Nelson says.

McCain's bipartisan popularity, says Larry Makinson, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, or CRP, also results from his appearing less scripted. This makes him stand out in a world of careful sound-bite politicians as a man who speaks his mind, Makinson tells Insight, calling McCain "an insurgent." A political adviser to one black Republican organization noted that presidential candidate Alan Keyes also speaks his opinions with conviction without relying on polls, but Keyes continually has been forced to fight for media access.