Who Are Mccain's Forces?

By NANCY GIBBS

What is it about mothers, their children and John McCain? At a town-hall meeting in Sacramento, Calif., last Thursday, a woman took the microphone and told the story of her young daughters and how disillusioned they were when they found out what Bill Clinton had been doing with Monica Lewinsky. "Will you truly bring dignity and courage to the White House?" she asked of McCain. Before she would let him answer, she had one more thing to say. "Also, can my son shake your hand?" Cut. Print it. Sliding by with a sly grin, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said in a stage whisper, "Another McCain moment."

Those with long memories will recall that George W. Bush spent the better part of last year promising that he would be the one to restore honor and dignity to the office, so help him God. And he was the sunny conservative who was flirting with all those minivan moms and flinging open the G.O.P. primaries so that moderate voters could help him fend off threats from Steve Forbes and the rest of the pack. So how is it that the candidate whose stake as the front runner was based on his war chest, his invincibility and his proven crossover appeal now finds himself running out of cash and scrambling for the attention of those same swing voters?

It seems there will be two general elections this year, which is why it already feels like October. It used to be that winners were cultured in the Petri dishes of Iowa and New Hampshire, but now that both G.O.P. candidates have won some and lost some and dug in for the long haul, this race will actually spill across all 24 states holding their contests between now and March 14. The whole landscape is wobbling. Though the exit polls from Michigan suggested, and Bush insisted, that McCain won only because of mischievous Democrats crossing over temporarily, McCain's support in that bellwether state may have actually been broader than has been reported. And though Bush remains powerful in the South, McCain is 20 points up in New England. So the big swing states, like New York, California and Ohio, that tend to decide matters in the general election are, for the first time in decades, also deciding who will make it that far.

This is why, in the wake of McCain's 8-point win in Michigan and 24-point rout in his home state of Arizona, Bush was repositioning himself so acrobatically. Having borrowed McCain's sneakers in South Carolina, where he ran as a Reformer with Results, last week he headed to Southern California to put some compassion back into his conservatism. His first event in the state was at an inner-city faith-based social-service organization of the kind he became known for touting last summer. "We have to keep talking to voters about the Governor's successful record," says Ari Fleischer, Bush's spokesman. "We're the candidate who has proven appeal to independents and minorities."

The only comparably dazzling spectacle was the one in the next ring, where McCain was loudly assuring conservative Republican loyalists that he was one too, not some kind of closet Democrat, and that it was O.K. to vote for him; they wouldn't burn in hell--in fact, they might at last wind up with a winner in November. "Don't fear this campaign, my fellow Republicans. Join it," he said, again and again.

After the South Carolina blowout, the Bush camp was convinced it had put McCain away--made him just another of those short-lived New Hampshire specimens who wind up under glass in political-science labs. In fact, over the weekend Bush stopped talking about McCain entirely and turned his focus to Al Gore. Some advisers were telling him as late as Tuesday morning that he would win Michigan by 5 points or more. When the results came in and McCain had triumphed, Bush was furious. Instead of a gracious concession speech, of the kind he gave in New Hampshire, Bush was as defiant as McCain was after losing South Carolina. Bush railed against McCain's tactics and blamed the loss on Democrats who crossed over and voted for McCain in order to "hijack the election."

But there was more to McCain's win than that, and it wasn't until later in the week when the pros could do some forensic work that Republican insiders began to whisper about how badly it had really gone for Bush in the biggest and most representative arena so far. Once again, primary turnout was extraordinarily high. Michigan veterans couldn't believe the numbers when they learned that 1.3 million people had voted, compared with a typical 500,000. At least four counties had to turn on the photocopy machines, make additional ballots and number them by hand. And John McCain won every one of those counties.

Bush's defenders argued that the reason McCain won 70 of Michigan's 83 counties was Democrats, who were meddling in G.O.P. politics but would never vote for a Republican in the fall. But the biggest increases in turnout actually came in longtime Republican areas in the rural West and Southwest, where few Democrats live. Even Bush partisans in Michigan got the shivers at this. "A lot of this is Republicans talking," said one. Ed Sarpolus, vice president of EPIC/MRA, a Lansing-based research firm, did a telephone poll on the day of the vote, and believes that Republicans voted in much higher numbers than the exit polls indicated--60%, not 48%. In his surveys, McCain got 37% of the Republican vote, not 29%, as the Voter News Service reported.

While Bush did well among older, traditional Republican women, McCain attracted blue-collar men and, more striking, family values-oriented women, who are worried about the moral tone of the country for their kids. The voters who say issues mattered more went for Bush; the ones who say character counts went for McCain. The ones who value Republican loyalty went for Bush; those who prefer candidates not tied to party leaders liked McCain. Tax cutters went for Bush, Social Security savers for McCain.

Is this real, the makings of a new Republican coalition? When he asked them, around 60% of the Democrats told Sarpolus that next November, they would continue to vote for McCain over Gore, as did two-thirds of the independents. "This is very significant," said Sarpolus. "This is a true general-election coalition."

If Sarpolus is right, it goes straight to the heart of the Republican fight: Should the party be trying to expand, with the diluted purity that would entail, or should it keep its current profile and run the risk of winning only 40% of the vote in presidential contests? A McCain backer put it in distinctly G.O.P. terms: "Is this a country club or a public course?"

With that choice in mind, the McCain camp was hell-bent on portraying Bush as the captive of his party's right wing--a divider, not a uniter. By the time Michigan voters were going to the polls last Tuesday, McCain had taken Bush's visit to Fundamentalist Bob Jones University in South Carolina and turned it into a symbol of the entire race. Bush, whose brother Jeb converted to Roman Catholicism, was forced to stand up and deny that he was an anti-Catholic bigot.

The anti-Catholic controversy had nothing to do with prejudice and everything to do with politics. Bush's decision to make the pilgrimage to Bob Jones was a calculated risk, but if his advisers underestimated the danger of Bush's being seen as tolerating the intolerant, it may be because they were so confident of his credentials on reaching out to minorities, in particular to Catholic Latinos in Texas. The members of Bush's senior team in Austin, Texas, were only vaguely aware of Bob Jones University's policies and past. "Reagan spoke there; President Bush spoke there; we didn't think this would spark a controversy," says a top Bush aide. And the speech wasn't much of a story--until the McCain camp worked overtime to make it one.

The irony is that McCain's camp did this by using the same tactic for which it was denouncing Bush--mass phone calls to Michigan voters. The calls suggested Bush tolerated anti-Catholic bigotry. Even if the tone of the phone calls was not entirely nasty, the campaign was ambitious. A million calls went out from the McCain camp to Michigan voters, not just the "Catholic Voter Alerts" but also comparisons between the two candidates and warnings to expect negative calls from the Bush camp.

McCain initially said he had nothing to do with the calls to Catholic voters. As Bush furiously noted after his Michigan loss, the McCain team admitted to the calls only after the polls had closed and the day's stories had been written. McCain doesn't appear to mind twisting the truth if it serves a larger purpose. In a battle he sometimes views as good vs. evil, he can get himself to a place where he thinks the end justifies the means--and he has come to think that Bush is a bad guy. Never would McCain say such a thing in public, but he blames Bush for the venom that poisoned South Carolina for him. McCain was especially appalled at phone calls that attacked him for having an adopted daughter from Bangladesh and leaflets that recounted his wife's history of addiction to painkillers. As they say in the novels, McCain holds Bush responsible for all that occurred in South Carolina and loves him accordingly.

The Senator lost no time christening his new McCain Majority and taking it out for a drive. McCain doesn't think he has to outflank Bush on the right; he just has to seem acceptably pro-life and pro-gun and anti-Big Government. In an ad taped last week he announced that he was a "proud Reagan Republican" who was looking forward to tearing up the "44,000-page tax code." And in private, members of the McCain team said they planned to spend more than Bush on ads in New York, California and Ohio.

McCain's crowds continue to be big and happy and curious. At California State University in Sacramento last week, the 1,500 who showed up included a bald-headed tie-dye man holding a Day-Glo HIPPIES FOR MCCAIN SIGN. The man yelled out across the crowd that he had been trying to line up traditional Republicans behind McCain, but he was having trouble. "I can't get them to listen," he said. "What can I do?"

McCain approached the irregular soldier. "Sir," he said, "with that enthusiasm and that attire, if they don't listen to you, sir, then they're not worth talking to." The questions from the audience matched its diversity, and the contradictions of McCain were on full view. "That's out-and-out racism," he said in response to a question about Bob Jones University. "I would tell them, 'Get out of the 16th century and into the 20th century.'" That was the moderate, tolerant, swinging John McCain talking. But then on a question about public funding for artists like photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose erotic scenes of mostly gay men incensed North Carolina's Senator Jesse Helms, McCain didn't dodge the bullet: "Some people may call it artistic license," he said. "I call it smut and filth." To a young girl asking about lowering the capital-gains tax so that she could pay for graduate school, McCain said relief should go to the working families first.

By Friday afternoon at Balboa Park in San Diego, a rock concert was out of control. Between 4,000 and 5,000 people turned up, some with MCCAIN MAJORITY signs, others with Jedi light sabers. Two helicopters hovered overhead, and McCain's bus had to park well out of the way to avoid running into the throng. Where there was a time early on in New Hampshire when McCain just kept talking until there was nothing more to say, now he barely has to say anything. He says hello, and the crowd goes nuts. "He's a phenomenon," says Kevin Staff, 45, a community college teacher. "A year ago, people said he was wasting his time. He has to be a good man to be able to land planes on an aircraft carrier."

Over in Bush country, meanwhile, there was predictable mutinous muttering as supporters wondered which genius had thought it was a good idea to drop $2 million in McCain's home state. That money was a little relic of the race they had once thought they'd be running. Four years ago, Steve Forbes won in Arizona--and back when the Bushies were making their spending plans, he was the guy they thought would still be standing by Arizona, not John McCain. In fact, the entire Bush strategy--early money, early inevitability, lots of leftover cash for spring--all that's way down the drain. So far, he's spent $60 million and picked up 57 delegates, compared to McCain's 95. Said a Bush wag: "You got to admit, this strategy of ours sure breaks new ground. Nobody's ever tried to do it this way."

The most important showdowns will be next week in two of the nation's biggest states. California's G.O.P. voters, a fairly moderate and independent bunch, face a weird system--everyone can vote in the primary but only Republican votes count when it comes to awarding the state's 162 delegates. That leaves open the possibility that McCain could carry the popular vote even as Bush grabs the entire Golden State delegation. That would hand Bush the single most important victory, gift-wrapped in headlines about how it proves he'll be the loser in the fall. In New York the primary is open only to Republicans, and Governor George Pataki's machine is pulling out all the stops for Bush. But the state's moderate G.O.P. voters may prove receptive to McCain, and the machine may not be any better than John Engler's turned out to be in Michigan. Right now, said a G.O.P. official on Capitol Hill, "they couldn't deliver pizza, let alone an election."

McCain's aides believe Bush will let New England go. A McCain win up north would allow Bush to say, "See? It's liberal types who are backing that guy." Just as they are doing that, McCain's folks will continue to paint Bush as a captive of the intolerant South. Says a McCain aide: "We're prepared to concede the Confederacy."

Bush officials like to say the battle against McCain is "all about mathematics now," a delegate chase in which Bush has an unmistakable advantage. That argument might make sense, if anything about this election made sense anymore. As a G.O.P. strategist admitted, "There's a book that says, 'This is how you nail John McCain.' But everything in the rule book says he shouldn't be where he is now. He's defied all the rules. The rules don't apply."

--Reported by James Carney with Bush, John F. Dickerson with McCain and Michael Duffy/Washington

With reporting by James Carney with Bush, John F. Dickerson with McCain and Michael Duffy/Washington