All The King's Horses...

By James Carney; John F. Dickerson

On the day John McCain suspended his presidential campaign, the telephone number at his Arizona mountain retreat became the hottest 10 digits in politics. Callers ranged from Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, who refrained (for the moment) from begging McCain to launch an independent bid, to George W. Bush, who awkwardly thanked McCain for his gracious exit without daring to ask for the endorsement the Senator had so pointedly withheld. But the ones who dialed en masse were the would-be peacemakers--the Bush emissaries, McCain intermediaries and unallied freelance negotiators--trying to save the Republican Party by brokering a postprimary reconciliation. Party chairman Jim Nicholson phoned in. Bob Dole called but wound up advising his old friend to hold out for as much as possible. G.O.P. Senators like Connie Mack and Phil Gramm who had worked against McCain were suddenly sending a shout out. And best of all: Paul Coverdell, Bush's top backer in the Senate, relayed word that his colleagues--39 of whom had endorsed Bush--couldn't wait for McCain to return so they could hold an official ceremony in his honor.

It's going to take more than a "welcome back" fruit basket from his colleagues to persuade McCain to make nice. The usual threats and blandishments that bring defeated primary opponents in line with the presumed nominee aren't likely to work on a man who centered his campaign on bucking the very Establishment that is now so desperately fashioning him valentines. McCain may have lost, but it is Bush who must play the supplicant. The Texas Governor's advisers concede that he cannot win in November without substantial support from the independents and Democrats who flocked to McCain, and exit polls show that many of those voters were turned off by Bush during the primaries. Without McCain's direct appeal, they will probably vote for Al Gore, or not at all.

But many close McCain advisers think the personal rift between the two men is too wide to bridge, at least in the near term. After all, the last time Bush tried to smooth things over-at a South Carolina debate in early February-the result was less than promising. During a commercial break, Bush grasped McCain's hands and made a sugary plea for less acrimony in their campaign. When McCain pointed out that Bush's allies were savaging him in direct-mail and phone campaigns, Bush played the innocent. "Don't give me that shit," McCain growled, pulling away. "And take your hands off me."

Since then the bile has only thickened. In the final days of the South Carolina primary, Bush supporters unaffiliated with his campaign passed around leaflets highlighting Cindy McCain's addiction long ago to painkillers and the family's adoption of a Bangladeshi girl. And although McCain doesn't believe Bush directed those attacks, the Governor's silence about them was as wounding as if he had. In New York the Bush campaign aired a radio ad that selectively picked from McCain's record to attack him as an opponent of breast-cancer research, an affront made worse by the Texas Governor's seemingly callous response when he was told that McCain's sister had suffered from the disease. "John got pretty worked over by these boys," says Senator Chuck Hagel, a McCain supporter and intermediary between the two camps. "That poison and bitterness and anger needs some time to drain off."

McCain may be the most aggrieved, but the animosity between the two is mutual. Bush has told friends and aides that his initial fondness for McCain waned as the primary campaign heated up. At their first face-to-face meeting on the campaign trail, before a debate in New Hampshire, Bush draped himself over McCain like a coat. "I love you, man," Bush said to his rival, whose skin nearly wriggled off in discomfort. Soon Bush would be saying something quite different in private. "There's a reason all those colleagues of his in the Senate support me and not him," Bush told a friend in January. "They think he's sanctimonious, and they're right."

What galled Bush most was McCain's double standard when it came to playing gutter-ball politics. As Bush pointed out repeatedly, employing a favorite Southernism, he didn't "appreciate" McCain's TV ad comparing his integrity with Bill Clinton's. And he really didn't appreciate those "Catholic voter-alert" calls paid for by McCain's campaign suggesting Bush shared the anti-Catholic bigotry espoused by elders at Bob Jones University. Which is why Bush will go only so far to make McCain his "friend" again. As Karen Hughes, Bush's spokeswoman, pointed out last week, her candidate won, not McCain. So there are limits to what McCain can demand.

In the preliminary negotiations late last week, McCain's side suggested Bush should adopt the core element of the Senator's campaign-finance-reform bill, a complete ban on the unlimited cash donations to the two parties known as soft money. But there is a reason Bush has opposed such a move in the past: the party people who made him a front runner and padded his campaign war chest believe McCain's brand of reform would destroy them.

Though McCain's folks think he holds a strong hand, many of their threats may ultimately be empty. McCain is, as he always says, a committed Republican, and he's not likely to sit on his hands while Gore sweeps past Bush into the White House. And while suspending rather than folding his campaign allows McCain to keep control of his delegates, staging a floor fight at the party convention this summer in the vain hope of inserting a pro-reform plank into the G.O.P. platform would only supply ammunition to those Republicans who deride him as the party's Ross Perot. Most important, say some who are close to him, McCain may want to run for President again in 2004--despite what he has said--and doesn't want to completely lop himself off from his party. At worst, say some insiders, McCain might withhold his endorsement until just before the convention, depriving Bush of the unity he seeks now, but giving no long-term aid to the Democrats either.

What calm heads in both camps believe is that the passage of time will clear the way for some kind of arrangement. While McCain relaxes with his family on the South Pacific island of Bora Bora this week, the number of G.O.P. savants who come forward to try to save the day will only multiply. Hagel, a Vietnam vet and one of McCain's few Capitol Hill supporters, could play a key role in any rapprochement. His participation in the early talks has already caused his name to creep up the unofficial list of possible Bush running mates. And Hagel happens to be the author of a more widely supported campaign-finance-reform bill. It could, says another McCain adviser, be a "starting point for a compromise."

The decision McCain faces will mirror a tension that ran throughout his campaign between the close-knit group of advisers who traveled with him and the handful of Washington powerbrokers and lawmakers who supported his campaign. The traveling advisers who are his closest confidants are true believers in the McCain crusade and grumble that D.C. insiders like former Congressman Vin Weber, former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein and even Hagel are negotiating out of school. The palace guard believes these outside advisers are boxing McCain into a deal that values party unity over McCain's cause. Duberstein spoke several times last week with Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser. But before leaving the country, McCain advised the self-appointed intermediaries not to make any deals in his absence, and put his loyal political director, John Weaver, in charge of the talks.

Those who know McCain best point once again to his biography for clues to how he will proceed. A man who worked to restore U.S. relations with the North Vietnamese after they held him captive for 5 1/2 years has an extraordinary capacity for forgiveness. Even when he thought Bush had played dirty to win a closely contested primary state, McCain placed the congratulatory phone call, something the Governor did not do after Michigan. So it may be that after the heat of the battle dissipates, McCain will remember a lesson from Luke Skywalker, the Star Wars hero with whom he identified during the campaign: in the end, Skywalker and Darth Vader reconciled.