Lexington
John McCain has bent with the wind in his Arizona primary. Will he snap upright again?
JOHN McCAIN has had a big life, brimming with action and emotion. Of all the characters on America’s political stage, the senior senator from Arizona comes nearest to a life that is Shakespearean in scope. Rambunctious cadet, bomber pilot, prisoner-of-war, torture victim, senator, presidential nominee: these roles have provided a magnificent arena in which to rehearse the full range of virtues and vices. What follows is that when Mr McCain is the story, its tellers are tempted to bend the narrative into some grand theme. But two of the current tales about Mr McCain suggest that this can be a mistake.
The first narrative casts Mr McCain in the role of out-of-date Washington insider, too long in the tooth, too independent-minded and too “liberal” for the country’s angry, tea-drinking conservative voters. According to this script, Mr McCain is heading for a fall in Arizona’s primary on August 24th no less humiliating than the one Utah’s Republicans inflicted on their long-serving senator, Bob Bennett, by refusing to reselect him in May.
It is easy to see why this once looked plausible. The country is in a rage against incumbents. Republican voters are looking for “true conservatives”, not RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). And, strange as it seems less than two years after he was their presidential candidate, Mr McCain is now viewed by many as the quintessential RINO. He once collaborated with the Democrats on immigration reform—a double sin to those who believe in total war against the “socialists” and no amnesty for illegal immigrants. He took global warming seriously, and promoted cap-and-trade legislation: two more stains on his character. He called himself a “maverick”; but to today’s grumpy conservative base that looks less like a badge of honour than a licence to cut deals in Washington and ignore the voters back home.
In short, the stage was set for a dramatic upset in this month’s election. How bitter, black and tragical that would be: the man who was nearly president ousted by the ingrates of his own party and state. There is, however, one flaw in the script. Nothing of the sort seems likely to happen. The most recent polls give Mr McCain a lead of 20 points over his main opponent, J.D. Hayworth. It has, in fact, been clear for weeks that Mr McCain has crushed his rivals and is cruising towards re-election.
Where did it go wrong for the tragedians, and for Mr Hayworth? The challenger’s claim to be a “consistent conservative” who would scythe down big government was shattered when the McCain team unearthed a three-year-old infomercial in which this self-proclaimed champion of fiscal rectitude and standing on your own feet flogged advice on how people could extract free money from Uncle Sam. But Mr Hayworth was always miscast as the incumbent-unseating battler against the Washington insider. He notched up a dozen years of his own on the capital’s Hill of Evil Counsel. And the silver tongue of the former radio host has been no match for the fortune Mr McCain has lavished on television ads. By the time Mr McCain consented to a pair of debates in Phoenix and Tucson in mid-July, he had far outspent Mr Hayworth and had no need to out-argue him.
Elections do make cowards of us all
Those hoping to see a giant toppled on August 24th are likely to be disappointed. But that will not snap the second strand of tragic narrative the media are spinning around Mr McCain. This holds that he has played most foully for re-election, sacrificing long-held principles and policies in order to secure the prize.
Much of this seems true. The former maverick has rebranded himself as a “partisan” who toes the party line: he has gone quiet on climate change and flip-flopped on gays in the military. Arizona is in a panic—some of it justified, most stirred up by election-seeking politicians—about illegal immigration from Mexico. Mr McCain is not one of the main stirrers, but nor has he sought to calm the nativist passions. The slogan of the erstwhile immigration reformer is: “Secure the border first”. Mr McCain stands with Arizona in its confrontation with the federal government over SB1070, a controversial state law plainly hostile in spirit to the more tolerant values that he was once proud to champion and which earned him admirers from the liberal end of politics.
In the eyes of that audience, playing false to win wrongly is more tragic than a noble defeat. “The saddest senator” was the headline Slate, an online magazine, put at the top of a recent article lamenting the fall of the hero. But it is easy for an audience to take this view. Things look different to the man on the stage.
Shakespeare gives his tragic heroes big endings: they take poison, fall on their swords, perish in duels. Losing to a former radio host in a state primary cannot have struck Mr McCain as a fitting end to his long career in politics. Besides, a politician can always find half-plausible excuses in which he can half-believe. True, he once gave his all to comprehensive immigration reform. But wasn’t the lesson of that failure that success was impossible until Americans believed the border was secure? And what entitles an elected politician to spurn the popular will? Would it not be improper (as well as suicidal) to represent Arizona without heeding and giving voice to its people’s fears about illegal immigration?
The fascinating question is not why Mr McCain has run the campaign he has: the answer is all too obvious. But might a new mandate bring back the old maverick? A centrist willing to cross party lines can be a star in a finely balanced Senate, and just think how liberating another six-year term could be to a man of 73. The fascinating question is whether winning in Arizona will erase his bitterness at losing to Barack Obama. “I’m reminded of that every day,” he blurted out at a White House meeting in February. Master that emotion and he can still be one of the great men on the stage. Submit to it and it will turn into his fatal flaw.
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