Slow Train Coming

Lexington
Slow train coming
Mar 8th 2007; From The Economist print edition

The last time he ran for president John McCain spent months rolling around New Hampshire in a bus, the Straight Talk Express. This time he has swapped the bus for a giant locomotive. He has hired high-price political consultants, some from the Bush entourage, tapped into a network of rich donors and established operations across the country. Yet the locomotive remains stubbornly stuck in the station.
Mr McCain is trailing Rudy Giuliani by as much as 25 points. His attempt to build bridges with the right has alienated his former friends in the centre without converting conservatives. And he seems to be dogged by bad luck—his recent announcement that he is going to run, for example, was marred by his faux pas about American lives being “wasted” in Iraq.
Why is the McCain express still immobile? The most important reason is the senator's outspoken support for George Bush's decision to send five more brigades to Iraq. This has not only put him on the wrong side of an unpopular war (two-thirds of the population oppose the “surge”); it has also strengthened the impression that he is speaking for the White House.
The other reason is his botched transformation from maverick to establishment figure. Mr McCain tried to turn himself into the inevitable Republican champion by mending fences with all the people he had upset in the past—from the Bush camp to the religious right to conservative activists. This made sense after his failure of 2000 (remember the old adage that Democrats like to fall in love while Republicans like to fall in line). But it is proving hard to pull off, with independents accusing him of pandering and conservatives still nursing their old wounds.
It would be a mistake, however, to think that Mr McCain will be static for ever. Mr Giuliani is a flawed front-runner. He has huge strengths as the architect of New York's turnaround and as the hero of September 11th 2001, to be sure. But he has equally huge weaknesses. His private life is tangled (his relationship with his son, Andrew, is so strained that he did not even turn up to his graduation). His business affairs are more tangled still. He has a foul temper and a mean streak as wide as the Hudson river. “Absolutely not,” was the response of Ed Koch, another former New York mayor and a political rival, to the suggestion that Mr Giuliani is a racist. “He's nasty to everybody.”
Mr Giuliani also seems unprepared for a national campaign. Last week George Will introduced him to the annual meeting of CPAC—a gathering of more than 6,000 red-meat activists—by saying that conservatism comes in many flavours, with Mr Giuliani the Thatcherite one. A nice point. But the former mayor then delivered a meandering speech that left the audience dispirited. His campaign may collapse as quickly as it inflated.
The Giuliani bubble is as much a proof of the weakness of the other anti-McCain candidates as it is a long-term threat to Mr McCain himself. The strongest competition to Mr McCain arguably came from Mitt Romney rather than Mr Giuliani (the rest of the candidates are midgets compared with the big three). Mr Romney has a long record of managerial competence—a huge selling point after George Bush's serial incompetences. He is also an efficient politician: his speech at CPAC was as smooth as Mr Giuliani's was ragged.
But the failure of the Romney campaign to catch fire is good news for Mr McCain. Mr Romney's Mormonism is proving more of a problem than many people expected: a quarter of Americans claim that they would not vote for a Mormon. But what is really damaging him is his opportunistic flip-flopping over abortion and gay marriage. If he is willing to pander on these issues as a candidate, might he not pander as president?
Conservative activists might warm to Mr McCain if they took another look at him. It is true that he has quarrelled with conservative pressure groups. But that is often because he sees them as obstacles to achieving conservative ends, such as a balanced budget or clean politics. It is true that Mr McCain refused to endorse the Federal Marriage Amendment. But he did so for the eminently conservative reason that these sorts of issues should be decided by the states rather than the federal government. It is true that Mr McCain has pushed for more federal funding for stem-cell research. But he has also been more consistently conservative on abortion than any of the other first-tier candidates.

Conservatism's best hope

Mr McCain has a rare ability to present conservative ideas in a language that moderates and independents can find appealing. He also has a rare ability to break with the conservative establishment on subjects where they are obviously batting on a losing wicket, such as global warming. This could make him the best candidate for reviving conservatism from its current dismal state—and also the best candidate for keeping conservatism alive in a Washington where the Democrats rule Capitol Hill.
Mr McCain has also often been right about the war. He was one of the first major politicians to call for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. He repeatedly criticised George Bush's tolerance of torture as a stain on America's good name. Even his support for Mr Bush's “surge” may not be as much of a liability as it appears. The bulk of Republican primary voters are in favour of giving the war one last chance; and Mr McCain's willingness to risk his political career over Iraq burnishes his tarnished reputation as a straight-talker.
His biggest weakness has to do with age rather than ideology. He will be 72 if he is elected to the White House, and his face is visibly scarred from bouts with skin cancer. But he has the energy and attitude of a much younger man, and seems to absorb energy from his audience. And he also boasts the most impressive biography in American politics. The McCain Express will not stay stuck in the station for ever.