The McCain Rage

...On issue after issue, he returns to the need for getting "Big Money" out of politics...

...Rolling down a dismal New Hampshire two-lane in a rented van last week, a staffer handed McCain a fresh column from the New York Daily News's Lars-Erik Nelson, one of the senator's thousands of media idolaters...

...What they came up with is a plan for the government to provide money to old people who can't afford the drugs— a simple, straightforward, and possibly bankrupting solution...

...Your problem is you're a fucking jerk.'" McCain giggled again...

...Iss., Gore, Bill Bradley, Steve Forbes, George Bush, Gary Bauer and the rest have been issuing highly detailed position papers and giving lengthy, showcase speeches weighted down with the arcana of tax reform, health care coverage, education funding, and America's role in the world...

...But that's not it...

...By contrast, good friends means "We are on speaking terms...

...The attention he lavishes on reporters is unprecedented for a Washington poobah...

...For months now, in response to the demand for Ser...

...This will be news, of course, to Kate Michel-man and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, but so far the point is palatable to gardenvariety pro-choicers in New Hampshire...

...Another is that the McCain moment has arrived because the other mainstream challengers to Bush— Lamar Alexander, Elizabeth Dole, and Dan Quayle—were unable to raise the money necessary to run a strong campaign...

...The same political miracle would occur, says McCain, in health care...

...But it's not going to happen unless we get rid of those people who make those six- and seven-figure contributions...

...Medicare, the price of prescription drugs, gun control, military spending, education, Social Security—having survived more than 50 town hall meetings in the last three months, McCain has prefabricated a brief response for most of the issues that arise in a happy and prosperous state...

...My friends, that is wrong...

...I feel passionately about injustice...

...The influence of "special interests" has become for McCain a kind of unified field theory to explain all the ills of modern government...

...I get angry sometimes...

...Now is the McCain moment in New Hampshire...

...Do I favor a flat tax...

...He seemed to be amused...

...First, who talked Al Gore the beta male into wearing those dippy brown suits...

...And temper tantrums...

...The press still loves him, by the way, and it's not hard to see why...

...At the end of the sessions, after an inevitable standing ovation, dozens of fans line up cradling copies of his book, Faith of My Fathers, now at number five on the New York Times bestseller list...

...We fix that and we can have a flat tax...

...He wants to de-fund the Department of Education down to 10 percent of its current funding, paying out the rest of the money directly to the states "with no strings attached...

...The editorial was reprinted two days later in the Union Leader, New Hampshire's largest newspaper, and as McCain crossed the state last week, fielding questions in half-a-dozen "town hall meetings," he was asked about it repeatedly...

...Opponents of campaign finance reform argue, of course, that political conflicts are at bottom the consequence of genuine ideological differences, to which the "special interests" have, predictably enough, attached their Big Money...

...And it works...

...McCain is bringing to New Hampshire the same persona that has for 15 years rendered the Washington press corps gaga with admiration and affection...

...It would be nice to report that all the talk about his temper got John McCain really, really ticked off...

...This carefully fashioned answer is vintage McCain, a blend of charming self-deprecation and grating sanctimony...

...I get angry when . . . " And so on...

...Thank you for your question," he said at a meeting in Hampton...

...I say, wherever there's a hungry child, there's a great cause...

...Of course, I favor a flat tax...

...I was just exploding about that this morning...

...BY ANDREW FERGUSON Hampton, New Hampshire So now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty...

...And it got that way because the special interests rule in Washington, and your interests are submerged...

...Wherever there's a senior citizen without shelter, there's a great cause...

...I think everybody should be able to fill out their tax form on a postcard: one or two or three rates, a few deductions for home mortgage, charitable deductions...

...We're friends...

...When I traveled with him last week he took to introducing me to his audiences— identifying me variously as a prisoner from a work-release program, a card-carrying member of the Communist party, and a freelance reporter for Hustler magazine...

...Incentives" are apparently different from "strings...

...McCain criticizes the Clinton administration for not being tough on China but thinks its "ruthless dictators" should be in the World Trade Organization...

...I get angry when I see Congress pouring money into weapons systems the Pentagon doesn't even want while 12,000 brave men and women in our military are on food stamps...

...Chuck and I are fine...

...Disc...

...In place of the standard stump speech that most candidates offer up, he makes a few minutes of remarks and then takes questions for an hour or more—a bit of implied flattery perfectly fitted to the pampered voters of New Hampshire, and a marked contrast to the question-averse front-runner...

...Look, I am a passionate person," he said...

...Who rules in Washington...

...he asked rhetorically last week...

...With the primary still three months away, his town hall meetings draw enthusiastic crowds of two- to three hundred...

...There are ironies here, not the least of which is that campaign finance reform gives McCain a reputation as a courageous plain-talker even as it relieves him of the need to take specific positions on, say, tax reform or health care reform...

...And that something would be...

...But he has made enough genuine enemies, both in and out of the Senate, to have turned the story of his temperament into his campaign's first difficulty...

...But it's not going to happen in Washington...

...And it turns out that what the chattering class really wanted to talk about was . . . clothes...

...Among his enemies is his hometown paper, the Arizona Republic, which published an editorial on Halloween questioning "whether McCain has the temperament . . . we want in the next president of the United States...

...McCain, meanwhile, has raised more than $10 million, much of it from industries he oversees as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee...

...Over the last several weeks the issue has become the centerpiece of his candidacy, and it reaps applause by the bushel from New Hampshire audiences...

...You and I tonight," he told an enthusiastic audience in Amherst, "we could sit down around this table and figure out a patients' bill of rights in a couple of hours...

...We need to take a hard look at it...

...At every stop last week he bemoaned the growing disparity in incomes...

...McCain's reaction was characteristic...

...On gun control, he announces himself a "strong supporter of the Second Amendment to the Constitution" while simultaneously supporting "whatever further constitutional measures we can have to keep guns away from those who shouldn't have them...

...At a town hall meeting last week, a college student read a two-page statement challenging him on the point...

...Who rules...

...of the Subst...

...According to these definitions, most of McCain's Senate colleagues are just good friends...

...On the issue of prescription drug prices, for example, which are far higher here than in any other developed country: "I kept getting asked all these questions about it, so I went back to our guys and said, 'Hey, we've got to come up with something here.' So we kicked around some things for a couple of hours...

...It's not going to happen because the trial lawyers bought out the Democrats and the HMOs have the Republicans...

...McCain tells audiences the success of his campaign will rest on his ability to "articulate my vision for America," in the manner of FDR, John Kennedy, or Ronald Reagan...

...But once again the former POW-turned-sena-tor-turned presidential candidate defied conventional expectations...

...Resolving these differences is called politics...

...You can't blame our presidential candidates for feeling blindsided...

...McCain criticizes the Clinton administration for not being tough enough on China but thinks its "ruthless dictators" should be admitted to the World Trade Organization...

...We must do something to correct that disparity...

...Nelson described an encounter several years ago between McCain and Chuck Grassley, the Republican senator from Iowa...

...I have an acute sense of right and wrong...

...It is a fantasy of Perot-like dimensions, and it may indeed be suited for these wan, de-ideologized days of Late Clintonism...

...Make some tough choices...

...He booms the idea at every meeting, though he says, "We haven't costed it out...

...Some of these responses are innovative, if questionable...

...We were on that special POW/MIA commission together, and Grassley hardly came to any of the meetings...

...His precise positions are further obscured by his passionate advocacy of campaign finance reform...

...It's the special interests who rule in Washington...

...And like all conventional politicians, he is expert at fudging his positions to the point of incoherence...

...Once money has been drained from politics, he says, Americans will be called to "a cause greater than their self-interest...

...I shouldn't have said it, but, you know, what the hell...

...And second, does John McCain ever scream at people when he gets mad, and if so, why...

...In that case, the McCain moment will last longer than anyone now expects...

...he's an old, dear friend means "We actually are friends...

...But suddenly everybody started listening to this guy Garwood...

...McCain scanned the first few sentences of the column and started giggling...

...He admits to being "proudly pro-life," while saying that "everyone—pro-life or pro-choice—has the same goal, which is to eliminate abortion...

...The tax code is 44,000 pages long...

...Bobby Garwood was a former POW widely discredited as a turncoat and opportunist...

...He went on to detail his feud with the Republic, which he says dates from a crude cartoon the paper published about his wife's addiction to painkillers, and then closed with a stirring confession of virtue...

...But McCain offers his audiences a vision of politics drained not only of money but of politics, too, in which differences disappear in the universal willingness "to get the job done," to use a favorite phrase...

...More astonishing—and more alarming for George Bush—a statewide poll last week put McCain within eight points of the front-runner, 38 percent to 30 percent...

...A few months ago McCain was in single digits in the polls, and he has only now begun airing TV ads...

...After campaign finance reform, McCain's message tends to trail off...

...Unlike Bush, he has not assembled a shadow government of policy wonks, choosing instead to rely on his Senate staff to generate positions...

...In the United States Senate, the world's greatest deliberative body of prima donnas, friends is a term of art, meaning "Our staffs are willing to do business with each other...

...That's a true story," he said...

...He promises to rebuild the armed forces and cut the military budget by at least $6 billion...

...He handed the kid a microphone and asked him to re-read the statement—"I don't think they could hear you in the back...

...All last week the world of American politics—which is alleged to hunger after Serious Discussion of the Substantive Issues—wrestled obsessively with two questions of enormous gravity...

...That vision is indeed hard to articulate...

...I tried to tell them, 'You can't Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...believe this guy, he's done this and this and this.' But Grassley keeps shoving this piece of paper under my nose, saying, 'Garwood says this, Garwood says that.' And finally I got angry and I said 'You know, I used to think your problem was that you don't listen...

...he would meanwhile attach "incentives" to encourage the states to test and fire incompetent teachers, adopt merit pay, enforce standards, and institute school-choice vouchers...

...From event to event the questions are remarkably uniform...

...People say there are no great causes left in America," he said...

...He calls it a "gateway" issue— the primary problem which, once resolved, will open the way to solving others...

...Most of his prefab answers, however, serve to underscore the unremarked secret of John McCain, which is that, stripped of a few complications such as his support for tobacco legislation and especially campaign finance reform, he is a remarkably conventional and cautious politician, of the sub genus Conservative Republican...

...And beyond these acts of individual kindness, there is always public service, which McCain terms "the noblest calling"—though this might sound odd coming from a public servant who is trying to convince his audience that the government is a sewer...