On the Road
Carlson, Tucker
On the Road From New Hampshire to California, a diary of the real McCain campaign. BY TUCKER CARLSON FRANKLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE—JANUARY 30 It's Super Bowl Sunday and John McCain is sitting on his...
...McCain loves funny stories, and during lulls in the conversation on the bus he often asks Murphy to tell the one about the candidate he worked for who seemed to have Alzheimer's...
...asks McCain...
...And how he feels is aggrieved...
...The candidate himself rarely drinks more than a single chilled vodka, and then only in private...
...Something unexpected has happened to John McCain: He won...
...Then he leans back in his chair, feet on the coffee table in front of him, chilled vodka in hand, and congratulates the man he has come to despise...
...If they get away with it," McCain tells reporters on the bus in California that night, "then I think it will change the nature of American politics forever...
...The conversation is over in less than 30 seconds...
...The Bush campaign is onto something...
...My best to your family," McCain says...
...He jokes about all of this, but he's not really kidding...
...Presidential candidates traditionally sit at the front of the plane, behind a curtain where they can confer privately with their staffs...
...Yep," says McCain...
...Would he allow her to have an abortion...
...She is seven months pregnant...
...The New Hampshire primary changed Price's life...
...As he explained one morning a few weeks ago, there's no reason to get sucked into "Talmudi-an" debates over policy...
...He's in a great mood...
...He is the dog who caught the car...
...McCain is in town for a few hours to participate by remote in a televised forum with Bush and Alan Keyes...
...None of this bothers McCain, who has successfully bailed out of four airplanes and knows he's not going to die in one...
...One morning in New Hampshire, a reporter asked McCain what he would do if his 15-year-old daughter Meghan were raped and became pregnant...
...All right, Johnny," he says, looking around the Beverly Hilton Hotel suite for John Weaver, the campaign's political director...
...All that remains is beer and donuts...
...You were better and he was better," replies Murphy, "so it was sort of a blur...
...Mike Murphy leans forward until he is inches from McCain's face...
...The Bush campaign complains that McCain's style and personality have caused many reporters to lose their objectivity about him...
...The AP's going with 'irritated.'" With three minutes to go before air time in St...
...He can talk forever about the need to open up Reagan National Airport to long-haul flights to the West Coast...
...A minivan full of vodka and a sack of potatoes and we got it for the whole week...
...A minute later, McCain grabs a final cup of coffee and heads into the studio...
...As Murphy tells the story, no matter how old it is, McCain breaks into hysterical, chair-pounding, hard-to-breathe laughter...
...In the next room, McCain's aides are watching the show by remote...
...The ad is nasty and misleading, but what really incenses McCain is the idea of it...
...I'm feeling a little wistful...
...He chuckles...
...McCain isn't one to drag things out...
...he asks...
...He has already lost New York and Ohio and a couple of other states...
...Murphy seems to be joking, though over the next month, as the campaign travels from coast to coast and back again and again, the plane does take on a certain Eastern European feel...
...He can do a pretty good campaign-finance-reform rap...
...At the front of the plane, right outside the cockpit and across from the cigarette-burned lavatory, are coolers of beer and wine, surrounded by baskets of candy bars and plates of cheese cubes...
...Johnny," McCain calls again...
...An aide has arrived with an appliance-sized cardboard box of McDonald's food...
...He no longer seems mad about losing...
...His arm hooks in the shape of a sickle when he writes...
...And that's it—the end of John McCain's run for president...
...Sure," says Cindy...
...His pockets are filled with talismans, including a flattened penny, a compass, a feather, and a pouch of sacred stones given to him by an Indian tribe in Arizona...
...McCain has just given a rousing speech to a packed VFW hall, and he's hungry...
...Harris was determined to stop the adjective in its tracks...
...One of the burgers comes close to beaning George "Bud" Day, a 70-ish retired Air Force colonel who has been traveling with McCain...
...Outrageous...
...There is no longer much reason to pretend...
...John McCain is a happy warrior, maybe the only real one in American politics...
...McCain can accuse a person of subverting democracy and grin as he says it, all without being phony or disingenuous...
...His teeth are set, his chin thrust forward in go-ahead-I-dare-you position...
...McCain's aides aren't even sure how long he's going to be on the show this morning...
...Venture far beyond those topics and the fine print gets blurry...
...On the bus from Saginaw to Ypsilanti, he goes all the way, recalling with a smile "that old bumper sticker: The Christian Right is Neither...
...By 8:00 a.m., the last of the coffee, bottled water, Diet Coke, and candy have disappeared from the bus...
...He hasn't come up with any talking points to explain his loss there...
...That's a very good question," he'll respond, and then neglect to answer it...
...Bush is on the line...
...As the plane touches down at a private airstrip in rural Ohio one afternoon, a voice comes over the intercom with a disconcerting announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Indianapolis...
...Sitting off to the side, watching it all, is Greg Price, the guy who will drive the bus when the plane lands...
...Tim Russert is hammering McCain on the subject...
...If this is allowed to go unchecked," he says, "there's never going to be another young American who's ever going to vote again, over time...
...In the final days before the New Hampshire primary, McCain took to pulling wackos out of the crowd at his town meetings and giving them air time...
...McCain looks on edge and unhappy, not at all like a man who has just achieved the greatest political triumph of his life...
...Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has spent all week stumping for McCain, peers out the window and spots it...
...Murphy, a 37-year-old political consultant who is both McCain's message guru and his comic foil, nods solemnly...
...And then there are the employees of major news organizations who, usually at night in the hotel bar, slip into the habit of referring to the McCain campaign as "we"—as in, "I hope we kill Bush...
...He seems to feel vindicated...
...McCain prefers a righteous fight to almost anything, and Bush has given him new reason for outrage...
...DETROIT, MICHIGAN—FEBRUARY 20 McCain lost the South Carolina primary last night, but you'd never know it from the way he's acting...
...in politics...
...Around his neck Day wears the Congressional Medal of Honor, which he won for heroism during the years he spent with McCain in a North Vietnamese prison camp...
...NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE—FEBRUARY 1 Primary day has arrived, and the final distinctions between McCain's mobile primary campaign and your average sophomore road trip to Vegas are breaking down...
...In the row next to him is the campaign's advance team, which is busy stuffing confetti guns—thick plastic pipes with CO2 canisters at the bottom—with orange streamers in preparation for the next rally...
...A few minutes later, Weaver appears with a cell phone...
...Not McCain...
...His style became more free-form by the moment...
...The debate goes fairly smoothly for McCain, despite the obvious disadvantage of appearing by remote...
...It's a dramatic change from a week or two before...
...McCain gets hotter with every campaign stop...
...For a politician it was risky, almost lunatic behavior—imagine if the shark man had started raving about Satanism, or the pleasures of child pornography...
...No one confessed...
...Like a lot of former fighter pilots, John McCain is superstitious...
...A few minutes later, Mike Murphy scans the AP wire and learns that McCain's lead has grown to 19 points...
...Day growls...
...But it is also a reflection of the candidate's personality...
...Now, sitting in the dark waiting for Larry King, he seems burdened, or at least bewildered...
...McCain's face reddened as he listened to the question...
...The room erupts in cheers...
...He doesn't appear to be preparing for Meet the Press in any way...
...I asked...
...They're going to have 'E2' above crossed light sabers...
...McCain laughs...
...As McCain eats, dripping ketchup liberally on his tie, the aide tosses burgers over his head to the outstretched hands of reporters...
...Bashing them might bring him more votes from moderates...
...A CNN crew works to dial up the satellite link to Larry King Live...
...We answer all questions on this bus...
...It's close to midnight when the staff bus leaves the hotel for the Manchester airport...
...Two days before the California primary, it is obvious to virtually everyone that McCain will not win the nomination...
...Dutifully retrieving our notebooks, my friend and I took this down...
...The bathrooms are scarred with cigarette burns...
...Weaver hates doing it, and for the moment he has disappeared...
...McCain is resigned to appearing tonight with Alan Keyes ("If we tried to keep him out of the debate, he might chain himself to my front door"), but it is clear that the very thought of George W. Bush makes him agitated...
...A few days later he turned the stage over to a guy with a boot on his head and a pair of swim fins glued to his shoulders like epaulets...
...And despite a long night at the bar in the Dearborn Hyatt, he is at the wheel of the bus at 8:00 a.m...
...I am a proud Reagan conservative," he says...
...The flight attendants speak in hard-to-pin-down foreign accents...
...SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA—MARCH 5 It soon becomes clear that a blur was not good enough...
...Reporters pounced...
...LOUIS, MISSOURI—MARCH 2 He is still mulling the question a couple of weeks later when the campaign plane touches down in St...
...Anyone who makes the effort to show up in costume deserves the microphone," McCain explained when a reporter asked what he was doing...
...The campaign's rising poll numbers seemed to bolster this theory...
...Cameramen and sound technicians are fiddling with coils of wires on the floor...
...I'll have yours done on Tuesday," Murphy replies...
...Mo Udall, about the Naval Academy, about the time he watched an Indian woman give birth in the corner of a bar in New Mexico...
...He was merely "tense...
...McCain knows all this...
...He and half a dozen advisers gather in the conference room of a television station downtown to eat barbecue and prepare...
...As the bus rolls past miles of rubble-strewn vacant lots on the way to the television studio, McCain is laughing and telling story after story—about the late Rep...
...No one seems to know...
...Except that in real life, he didn't...
...ST...
...One of them—the guy with five earrings and control of the CD player—recently came off tour with the Foo Fighters and Nine Inch Nails...
...It's not a rhetorical question...
...Except he wasn't, it was explained later...
...McCain appeared to thrive on it...
...McCain knows he must do well...
...But isn't that a pro-choice position...
...BY TUCKER CARLSON FRANKLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE—JANUARY 30 It's Super Bowl Sunday and John McCain is sitting on his campaign bus finishing off the second of two hamburgers...
...A candidate who offers total access all the time, doesn't seem to use a script, and puts on a genuinely amusing show...
...Outside, the scene in the lobby looks like the end stages of a particularly rowdy wedding reception...
...I'm drawing a blank," he says...
...McCain does very little in private...
...He is buzzing with energy...
...he asks Murphy...
...Voters say they dislike attacks ads, but they generally believe them...
...Still, he is finding it hard to choke back how he feels...
...A photographer, exhausted from days on the road, has taken off his boots and is lying flat on his back asleep surrounded by camera bags...
...It's like Stokely Carmichael," Weaver says...
...For a moment the room is silent...
...To McCain, a loss to the massive Bush machine is proof that everything he has been saying for the past year is true: That money is the decisive factor To McCain, a loss to the massive Bush machine is proof that everything he has been saying is true: The system is rigged to exclude mavericks...
...Murphy has taken to wearing a pin that says "W stands for Wuss...
...Tim Russert has just told McCain's guys that the latest round of exit polls from California looks bad...
...It's okay," he says softly...
...He looks slightly concerned...
...We're picking your cabinet back there, John," he says...
...McCain seems oblivious to it all...
...It is the last scheduled debate...
...Nervous reporters joke that if the plane does start to go down everyone on board will try to hop into his lap...
...Most people don't really want to know the details...
...He has come to know McCain's family...
...I happen to be standing next to the coffee maker when McCain walks over to pour his ninth cup of the day...
...After his speech a few hours later, McCain and his wife are hustled into a conference room in the hotel for their first round of post-victory television interviews...
...At one point he handed the mike to a man dressed like a shark...
...Nobody gives a shit...
...Louis, McCain is standing in the make-up room with a small group of advisers practicing his final comments...
...He is 30, a laid-back, chainsmoking Navy veteran with no previous interest in politics...
...in hand, only to be intercepted by an MTV correspondent who looks about 15...
...In speeches, he continues to swing wildly at Bush...
...He is probably both...
...He seems to mean it...
...That's acceptable, said Harris, nodding...
...He's thinking about what he needs to do in the debate, and about mistakes he has made in weeks past...
...That was in August...
...He looked furious...
...Mike Murphy is one of the greatest liars anywhere...
...At 7:00 the networks declare him the winner...
...Before McCain can answer, Murphy jumps in with an insult...
...McCain returns to his hotel suite and spends most of the afternoon chatting with his POW friends...
...Minutes after takeoff a crowd gathers near the rear galley...
...It takes only a day or two of this sort of thing for the average political reporter to decide that John McCain is about the coolest guy who ever ran for president...
...And sometimes we lie...
...It's a Russian copy of a 727," Murphy says...
...The whole thing is so amusingly improbable— the joke that came true...
...What am I supposed to do...
...Before long he is snoring quietly...
...It's been the great experience of my life," he says...
...Come out and make a statement that my wife is not a drug addict...
...He's in a sentimental mood...
...He throws his fist into the air...
...He can rant about the evils of the special interests as he cheerfully attempts to eat an éclair with a plastic spoon...
...Aren't you Mike...
...BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA—MARCH 7 By quarter to eight on the night of the California primary John McCain's presidential campaign has minutes to live...
...McCain is going to lose...
...Harris had heard that someone, probably a wire-service reporter, was planning to describe McCain's response to the pro-choice question as "angry...
...It's obvious that no one really cares, least of all McCain...
...Instead McCain mentions three times how much he will miss rolling through New Hampshire in a bus...
...It's a good point, and absolutely true...
...I've got to try not to get down into the weeds tonight," he says, to himself as much as to me...
...An hour and a half later, McCain's mood was upgraded...
...McCain honestly wants to know...
...McCain points what's left of his hamburger at Murphy...
...With McCain you get the feeling that the pleasure is in the process—that he considers the actual election a signal that the fun part is over...
...Afterward, as he sits in a chair having his make-up removed, Murphy renders the verdict...
...The paint around the entryway is peeling...
...Finally, on what turns out to be one of the campaign's final bus rides, from LAX to the hotel, McCain's rhetoric reaches the boiling point...
...Fifteen minutes...
...In person the effect is far more complicated...
...Tell Governor Bush to tell his cronies in Texas to stop destroying the American political system...
...You're never going home again," Cindy McCain told him when CNN announced that her husband had won both states...
...the subsequent 19-point New Hampshire blowout proved it...
...Sunday morning to take McCain over to Meet the Press...
...We're not wasting precious campaign dollars on expensive American-made, quality aircraft...
...They're drinking, too...
...Now it's time to face the reporters waiting in the lobby, and from there on to the concession speech...
...Burn it down—I love that...
...His script is terrible...
...In fact, he enjoys being kind of reckless, and so does his staff...
...If you're used to covering campaigns from behind a rope line—and virtually every reporter who doesn't cover McCain full time is—it's almost too good to believe...
...Soothing McCain is a large part of Murphy's job...
...On the bus McCain seems, by turns, happier and more frustrated than ever...
...Louis...
...On paper he can come off as a red-faced blowhard...
...The problem with the media," he says, "is you're obsessed with process, with how many left-handed, Independent soccer moms are going to vote...
...That the system is rigged to exclude outsiders and mavericks...
...Most of all, McCain considers his defeat evidence that he ran an honorable campaign—he lost because he would not do anything to win...
...he demanded...
...They're going around saying Cindy's a drug addict who's not fit to be in the White House," McCain says, his fists clenched...
...During the race in South Carolina, leaflets were distributed at political events that savaged Cindy McCain for her early-90s addiction to prescription painkillers...
...It will destroy it...
...There's a case of champagne on the floor near the driver, but everyone is drinking beer...
...McCain is one of those people who have to be seen to be properly understood...
...Bush may be a dishonest candidate running a vicious campaign, but in the end . . . McCain looks up from his coffee...
...He seems to know everything about American Indian tribes in Arizona...
...Back then, before he had seriously considered the possibility that he could become president, McCain seemed determined to run the most amusing and least conventional campaign possible...
...The campaign has hired a couple of heavily tattooed Manhattan nightclub DJs to run the sound and lights...
...You were good...
...McCain feels aggrieved fairly often, but for some reason his aides hate to admit it...
...He has seen his wife for a total of 24 hours since...
...That the Establishment felt so threatened by his honesty that it mobilized to crush him...
...If he wasn't angry, is it fair to say he was irritated...
...I think I can tell what he's thinking: Didn't Pan Am go out of business years ago...
...There are reporters who call McCain "John," sometimes even to his face and in public...
...The Bulgarian mechanics checked it out and said it runs fine...
...McCain is genuinely amused by Murphy—he calls him "Murphistopheles," "The Swami," or simply "008," James Bond's little-known political consultant brother—but he is also calmed by his presence...
...At some point, McCain began to suspect that Price was a lucky bus driver...
...There is no relief on his face...
...I've seen him do it...
...Cocktails are a recurring motif on the McCain campaign...
...Do I have to...
...A few days later, at the bar on the plane, Weaver comes up with a new slogan: "Eradicate Evil...
...Get someone to paint 1-800-BULLSHIT on the side...
...At the back is a bar—not a rack of miniature airplane bottles, but a table laid out with quarts of booze, ice, and mixers...
...Where's the booze...
...SAGINAW, MICHIGAN—FEBRUARY 21 McCain seems to be taking his own slogans to heart...
...We're going to have T-shirts printed," Weaver says...
...What a caper," he says...
...McCain is using a thick blue marker to jot down some final revisions on a piece of scrap paper...
...His mouth is puckered, like he just took a shot of something sour...
...Outrageous...
...Price initially expected to be back home within a couple of weeks...
...LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA—MARCH 6 With defeat a day away, McCain is becoming even looser...
...What about McCain's state of mind on the bus this morning...
...asks the MTV girl...
...We ought to call this The Bullshit Express," he says to Murphy...
...His poll numbers have stopped rising...
...Inside, where McCain is, the room is dark and still...
...About this time, Tucker Carlson is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Senator," says a reporter who came on for the first time at the previous stop, "can I ask you a couple of questions...
...Billionaire Texans attacking my integrity...
...Members of his staff are almost always in the bar till closing...
...Sounds of clinking glasses and raspy old-guy laughter follow him from the back of the bus...
...You were better than last time," he says...
...Half an hour...
...The networks haven't called the race yet, but the official pronouncement is imminent...
...Could I get a quick interview...
...All except McCain, who stands by himself, arms folded in front of him, unsmiling and not saying a word...
...Price has stayed in McCain's hotel every night, sometimes in a suite...
...In conversations with reporters, he has begun to make disparaging references to the "Christian right," the "extreme right," and the "bunch of idiots" who run Bob Jones University...
...In December, he returned to Columbus briefly, got married, then left to rejoin McCain two days later...
...McCain looks like he isn't sure what to say...
...Cindy McCain, the candidate's wife, approaches, a glass of wine Bush's ad is nasty, but what really incenses McCain is the idea of it...
...Murphy has spent his life trying to destroy people's political careers," McCain says...
...For the first time, he talks about his opponents in a way that seems bitter...
...It is Weaver's job to arrange concession calls to the Bush campaign...
...I won't bother you with the details," McCain often says when a member of the audience at one of his speeches asks about a specific piece of legislation...
...When the bar at the Copley Plaza in Boston finally stopped serving one night, one of the campaign's traveling press secretaries went to his room, emptied the contents of the minibar into a pillow case and returned to keep the festivities going...
...He's blasting a tune by Fatboy Slim...
...In the weeks since, Price has gone everywhere with McCain...
...Onward...
...If it's after four in the afternoon, just about everyone else has a drink...
...My friends," he said gravely, "my party has lost its way...
...He has his eyes locked, unblinking, on the blank camera in front of him...
...The reporter looks a little confused, but goes ahead and asks his question, which is about McCain's strategy for winning the New Hampshire primary...
...Hundreds of people are dancing and cheering and yelling...
...A friend and I were sitting in a diner in downtown Manchester having breakfast when Todd Harris walked up to our booth carrying a statement from McCain on the abortion question...
...The right engine periodically makes loud, unexplained thumping noises...
...on the night of the Arizona and Michigan primaries he sipped cocktails in the candidate's living room in Phoenix...
...Someone gestures to the back of the bus, and Day soon disappears to rejoin a group of fellow former POWs who, by the sound of it, have already located the bar...
...Almost every landing ends with at least three bounces along the runway...
...McCain translates: "You're assholes, in other words," he says, chortling and grinning so wide you can see the gold in his molars...
...By afternoon, McCain is accusing Bush and his supporters of trying "to steal this election...
...Occasionally, in flight, the plane lists dramatically to one side for no apparent reason...
...McCain blames conservative Christian groups (and to some extent, the Bush campaign) for the flyers, as well as for a series of ugly push polls...
...Campaigns typically hire new bus drivers in each city...
...Part of this is calculated rhetoric: McCain knows most evangelicals aren't planning to vote for him anyway...
...he shouts to a crowd in Ohio the Sunday before the primary...
...What kind of plane is that...
...Not surprisingly, McCain is having a pretty rough time on Meet the Press...
...Rick Davis, his campaign manager, is humming "Ode to Joy" and pacing in the corner...
...Billionaire Texans attacking my integrity...
...Moments after McCain got off the bus, Todd Harris, the campaign's traveling press secretary, loped to the back where half a dozen reporters were still sitting, replaying their tapes and checking their notes...
...It was decommissioned from Air Flug in the 70s...
...Members of his staff are taking pictures of each other, presumably to capture a moment that is about to end...
...John Weaver is eating a piece of melon and chuckling about the campaign's unofficial slogan, "Burn it Down...
...At a rally this morning in Traverse City, he spent more time than usual beating up on the Republican party...
...The following morning, Bush's Texas Cronies have become "Governor Bush's sleazy Texas buddies...
...Power to the people...
...McCain is eating the donuts...
...Between interviews, he maintains the pose...
...McCain can be kind of reckless...
...And no matter how they feel about the accuracy of an attack, voters almost always perceive complaints about negative campaigning as whining...
...Or for that matter to be polite about the opponent...
...Those who travel stay in inexpensive hotels near the rest of the campaign staff...
...My party has become captive to special interests...
...A pair of rich Bush supporters in Texas have paid for an ad that attacks McCain's record on environmental issues...
...McCain takes the phone without hesitating...
...It's an effective technique on the stump...
...He also knows that the public doesn't believe that his campaign has behaved any more honorably than Bush's—particularly after McCain was caught lying last month about calls his campaign was making to voters in Michigan...
...The bus finally pulls onto the tarmac and comes to a stop beside an elderly-looking jet with Pan Am markings...
...McCain sounded about as angry as a presidential candidate can, or for that matter ever has...
...He wears lucky shoes, eats lucky food, makes certain to get out on the correct side of the bed...
...I misspoke," it began, and went on to explain that if Meghan McCain were to get pregnant, the entire family, not Meghan alone, would decide what to do next...
...Stopping them, he says, "is a race against time...
...But part of it is heartfelt...
...McCain wasn't angry at all, Harris explained...
...They may feel sorry for a candidate who is being bashed over the head, but they tend to assume he must have done something wrong...
...After a family discussion, he replied slowly, "the final decision would be made by Meghan...
...On some trips he has been a passenger rather than a driver...
...Price has been with McCain since the beginning of the New Hampshire campaign, when he was hired from a charter bus company in Ohio...
...On the bus, his jokes are getting more outrageous...
...The full hour, McCain discovers when he gets to the studio...
...I am . . ." He stumbles, stops, then closes his eyes...
...A few of McCain's aides look like they might cry...
...Looking out across an imaginary audience, McCain tries to recite what he has written...
...Or about the campaign ad he claims he once made that accused an opponent of selling liquor to children...
...One of his most prominent supporters in South Carolina, it turns out, is affiliated with a magazine that has been hostile to the organized civil rights movement...
...Let's go," he says, bouncing out of his chair...
...Late polls have shown him likely to beat Bush today, but he doesn't seem particularly jubilant about it...
...Weaver's voice floats out of an adjoining bedroom...
...He doesn't seem upset about South Carolina...
...Do you think so...
...Who's calling him 'angry...
...No it's not, barked McCain...
...A cable news producer works to wrench the cap off a beer bottle with a cigarette lighter as a group of cameramen sit nearby chatting and drinking horrible airplane champagne out of two-piece plastic cups...
...McCain has never had a reputation as much of a detail guy...
...McCain is angry at Bush...
...Very angry...
...After each event he reboards the plane like any other commuter, opens and closes a series of overhead bins in search of a place to store his coat, then finds a seat in economy class and sprawls out, head back and mouth open...
...And in seconds, it is...
...John Weaver, McCain's taciturn political director, stands at the bar pouring himself an unusually large drink...
...For an instant he looks defeated, like he may not be able to continue...
...He spends most of his time in the air asleep...
...one of the POWs sticks his head into the compartment where McCain is sitting...
Vol. 5 • March 2000 • No. 27
