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Arizona Senator McCain can only hope that the Feb. 22 primaries in Michigan and Arizona resemble the Star Wars sequel Return of the Jedi. Otherwise, the Senate is the only place McCain will be returning to anytime soon.
For John McCain, the happy reformer of Campaign 2000, the past few weeks have been right out of the George Lucas saga. He has cast himself in the good-guy role, borrowing the movie serial's theme music for campaign events. He even jokes that he's trying to escape from the Death Star of American politics.
If the New Hampshire primary played out like the original Star Wars, where the force was with McCain, the Palmetto State showdown was more like The Empire Strikes Back. There, a phalanx of Bush GOP operatives, combined with an army of Christian soldiers, handed McCain a stunning setback.
What can the renegade senator do to regain the momentum he seized in the New England snows?
HIT SQUAD.
It's easy to figure out what went wrong. McCain was buried under a barrage of negative ads, attack phone calls, a nasty e-mail assault, and hypercharged rhetoric from right-wing talk-show hosts who back Bush. The Bush campaign was as cold-blooded and efficient as a mob hit squad in kneecapping a target.
This isn't intended as a criticism of the Bush campaign's tactics. The Texas governor and his allies did what was necessary to rescue his front-running campaign from the political abyss. Politics ain't beanbags. And McCain contributed to the situation by overreaching with a TV commercial that compared Bush to President Clinton -- allowing Bush to portray himself as the aggrieved victim of a campaign slander.
By the time South Carolina voters went to the polls in record numbers, a majority of GOP primary voters felt that George W. Bush (and not McCain) was the real reformer. Many Republicans genuinely thought the Democrats had a plot to throw the GOP into chaos by recruiting Dems to cross over for McCain. Some conservatives even believed the oft-repeated radio trash talk that McCain was a "Manchurian Candidate," brainwashed by his North Vietnamese captures and programmed to serve them decades later as U.S. President. Wild stuff.
REDEFINITION.
It won't be easy for McCain to bounce back. Bush, despite spending some $50 million of his record-breaking $70 million war chest, still has plenty of cash stashed away for further McCain-bashing barrages in Michigan, California, and Florida. The wounded Arizonan must reredefine himself as the only true champion of reform and the only candidate of character in the race.
But how? If McCain aggressively counterpunches against Bush, he loses his claim to being a person who is above "politics as usual." What's more, it exposes his no-negative-campaigning promise, made when he pulled his anti-Bush ads off the air in South Carolina, as empty rhetoric. But if McCain sits by passively and allows Bush's designated hitters to cast him as Mr. Chairman, the Washington insider whose campaign is infested with lobbyists, he stands about as much chance to win the nomination as Jabba the Hut.
It's a tricky situation. McCain's first attempt at dealing with the situation, his angry, defiant concession speech on Feb. 19 at the North Charleston Convention Center, seemed more like Bob Dole's whiny "stop-lying-about-my-record" fiasco of 1988 than Ronald Reagan's "there-you-go-again" masterpiece of 1980.
CALLING ON HEROES.
McCain doesn't have much time to regain his ground. He needs to convince moderate Republicans and crossover Democratic and Independent voters that Bush has sold his soul to the Christian Right, the party bosses, the far-right Movement Conservatives, and the Establishment money bags. He won't do it by sounding like Bob Dole on steroids.
It's time for McCain to synthesize the messages of his pantheon of heroes -- Teddy Roosevelt, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan -- and pursue a positive yet aggressive theme. Moderation in the defense of one's own character is no virtue. McCain has little choice but to speak softly while wielding a big stick.
Dunham is White House correspondent for Business Week EDITED BY DOUGLAS HARBRECHT
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