Posted on 03/11/2004 2:57:32 PM PST by shrinkermd
WASHINGTON - Truth be told, John McCain really can't stand George W. Bush, even if he agrees with him on a lot of things, especially Iraq. It's amusing for us political reporters to watch the senator from Arizona struggle with the role fate handed him: riding shotgun on the Bush re-election stagecoach. It's hard to know whether McCain, deep down, wants to protect his passenger or let the Indians have him. As for Bush, he doesn't trust McCain, but needs him.
McCain's rhetorical flirtation with the idea of becoming Sen. John Kerry's running mate is just the latest act in an ongoing intramural psychodrama that began in 1999, and no amount of common geostrategic purpose in the post-9/11 world can end it. He is a proud man, a fierce fighter, with an ego to match the pride and the ferocity. He wanted the Republican nomination in 2000, wanted it badly, and raged against what he saw as a system rigged against him.
As the season started, McCain surveyed the landscape and saw Bush as a pampered kid being set up in the family business — presidential politics — on the strength of his father's connections and access to money. McCain railed in private about this. He tried to laugh about it, but there was seething anger beneath. McCain was from royalty, too, in his own way — Navy royalty. He was the namesake of a famous father, too, and that smoothed his path to Annapolis, and helped keep him there. But he had paid his dues in the most profound way, with five years of his life in prison cells in Hanoi.
The deeper wound was South Carolina. Had McCain won the primary there, he might be president today. His own tactical mistakes were costly. But there was another reason for his loss. The good ol' boy supporters of the Bush Team savaged McCain and his family, spreading vicious rumors about their character and racial makeup. No direct tie to the campaign has been found. But none was needed. The boys didn't have to be told what to do. They knew. They'd done it before, to others.
Letting bygones be bygones
After it was all over, Bush, with his usual steely geniality, told McCain that the rough stuff of the primary season was not his fault and, in any case, was just politics. Time for bygones to be bygones. Exactly what the senator said in reply isn't known. But Bush and Karl Rove knew that they couldn't afford to antagonize McCain further. McCain, for his part, didn't want his "maverick" reputation to rob him of the chance to be a major player in a capital dominated by his fellow Republicans.
Even had 9/11 not happened, the Bush White House would have had to tolerate McCain. He is chairman of perhaps the most powerful and certainly the busiest committee in Senate, the Commerce Committee. Virtually every big-hitting corporation with business in Washington needs to see Rove & Co., of course, but they also, quite often, need to see the senator.
Since the Twin Towers fell, Bush and McCain have been thrown into closer proximity. The president needs McCain's support and credibility as a military man; McCain needs the president to champion their shared belief that force — and only force — can teach the terrorists and their blathering U.N. apologists that America will protect itself at all costs.
McCain has been measured but evidently quite serious in his praise of the president's handling of the war on terrorism and the aftermath of 9/11 in particular. He told friends that he thought Bush had risen to those occasions impressively.
The fun of needling Bush
But McCain still finds it hard not to remind the White House of his independence, and can't resist needling Bush even when he dutifully is arguing the president's case. We were right to go to Iraq, McCain says repeatedly, but he has been increasingly tough on the administration's intelligence-gathering problems and use of intel in making its case for war. He has refused to sanction the notion that intelligence data was deliberately distorted, but insisted on the need to probe — hard — for the facts.
When Bush-Cheney ’04 launched a TV ad last week that invoked the horrors of 9/11, McCain defended the move — but added that perhaps the president's team might have chosen other pictures for the video: just enough to give critics some support.
And now the question of the veepship. It's true that he and Kerry are close. They are perhaps the leading members of an informal caucus of Vietnam Veterans in the Senate, a fiercely loyal group that tends to eschew party lines whenever possible to express solidarity with one another. It's also true that, like any politician, McCain likes to make news, likes to be in the limelight, and likes to be asked if he has any interest in being a partner in a national ticket.
I don't think McCain is serious. He'll stay where he is, but it's not because he feels any affection for the guy he's riding with.
Howard Fineman is Newsweek’s chief political correspondent and an NBC News analyst.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Couldn't agree more with the above. Would add though, McCain is consistently blindsided by his own rage--not the sort of person to be at fulcrum of power.
BULL
Bush doesn't need McCain for anything. It's called damage control of an emotionally disturbed enemy.
The liberal media are going to feature McCain any time they think they can get him to say something bad about Bush, so Bush has to keep massaging McCain's ego to keep him from running to the press with hurt feelings.
McCain won't ask for the Democratic Vice-Presidential nomination. He'll continue to act amused by the suggestion, without quite nailing the door shut to the possibility. That way he gets plenty of publicity and political leverage and ego massaging.
But if Kerry begs him, I think McCain will accept the VP nomination. After all, it would once again make him a star in the political firmament, and it could bring him very close to his goal of the Presidency. He'll never get another shot at it, and his ambition and pride will make it difficult if not impossible to turn a real offer down.
Will Kerry beg? If the polls show that it's his best or only chance to win the Presidency, Kerry wouldn't hesitate for a nanosecond to beg. He'll do whatever it takes to win the election, and if putting McCain on the ticket upsets a few hard-core anti-war Democrats, tough sh!t.
So, even though nobody was able to prove direct ties to the Bush campaign, McCain hates him anyway for it. Besides, if McCain wants to blame anyone for his not being president today, he should take a look in the mirror. I remember seeing Maria Shriver interviewing him right after he lost a primary. Admittedly, she reached him at a raw moment, but he totally lost his temper with her and looked downright insane.
He chooses to forget that little fact.
This got started in an article from the New York Post over a week ago by Deborah Orin quoting McCain.....
February 26, 2004 -- THE Democratic dream candidate for vice president on a John Kerry ticket is a Republican - Vietnam War superhero John McCain. The Republican fantasy for Kerry's veep is New York's own Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. But it looks like zero chance. Few pols have more credibility than McCain - no wonder Kerry never misses a chance to cite him. Kerry's four months in Vietnam combat are central to his campaign bio. Imagine if he could add McCain's 51/2 years as a hero POW in the Hanoi Hilton.I don't think McCain is going anywhere....But McCain says no way. "Do you think the Democrats would want a pro-life, free-trading fiscal conservative? They'd be smoking something pretty strong, stronger than they usually do," McCain (R-Ariz.) told The Post. "I will not leave the Republican Party."
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