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Boy on the bus
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March 6, 2000 | BUFFALO, N.Y. -- He was even making inroads with the Christian conservatives his father would need to win the commonwealth -- those who it appeared might fall under the sway of televangelist/ Freemason conspiracist/McCain hater Pat Robertson. Just that Sunday, Feb. 27, Doug McCain ran into Robertson's son, Tim, for morning services at the Galilee Episcopal Church. Tim's daughter Calle was a sixth-grade classmate of Doug's daughter Caroline. Instead of going into church, however, Doug McCain and Tim Robertson stood outside and talked about their fathers' feud. The junior McCain told the junior Robertson that their fathers probably had far more in common than he realized. He told him that the George W. Bush camp had misrepresented the McCain proposal for campaign finance reform to Christian leaders.
By the end of the conversation, Doug McCain says, Tim Robertson was on board and ready to support John McCain. Unbeknown to Doug, however, the McCain campaign had other plans that would make that impossible. McCain and his chief aides, campaign manager Rick Davis, political director "Sunny" John Weaver, media strategist Mike Murphy and Senate chief of staff Mark Salter, were fuming about the dirty and, in their view, stupid campaign Bush was waging. The week was going well for them precisely because of Bush's mistakes. Bush had finally admitted his error in going to the segregationist-leaning, anti-Catholic Bob Jones University and not speaking out against the university's social retardation. Bowing to political reality, Bush issued an apology that seemed nakedly insincere on its face. Reluctantly issued nearly a month after the Texas governor decided that compassionate conservatives have a duty to suck up to backward bigots, Bush finally put together a halfhearted mea minima culpa and sent it to Roman Catholic church leaders in key primary states with a strong Catholic vote. (No apology was sent to any members of the African-American community, a paltry number of whom vote in GOP primaries.) Still, there was a rising -- and, based on McCain's history, surprising -- anger within the Arizona senator's campaign against the country club prejudice they saw from the Bush camp. Though he has tried to exemplify tolerance in his personal life, McCain has never made many public declarations of racial, religious or sexual tolerance before. But for whatever reason -- partly because Bush ran so quickly to the right, partly because of a new constituency of independent and Democratic voters who seemed to dig him, partly because of the strong support of a meritocracy left over from the military and partly because he seems to believe it -- he has assumed Bush's compassionate-conservative mantle. "It's part of life," says Weaver, "and part of campaigns. You grow." "I think I've changed," McCain told Salon on Sunday during a trip to Ohio. "I have a much broader vision of this country, and a much better understanding of where America needs to go. But isn't that rational after being exposed to a nationwide campaign?" Much of his change stemmed from attacks Bush and his surrogates had launched against him in South Carolina. In addition to the various attacks launched against McCain's wife and adopted daughter from Bangladesh, Bush and his allies had an interesting habit of lumping McCain with Jews and blacks. McCain was constantly decried for being supported by a former senator named Warren Rudman and a South Carolinian named Sam Tannenbaum. Bush himself kept alluding to an African-American state senator and the African-American mayor of Detroit, misrepresenting both as McCain supporters. Then came the whole McCain-as-homo-lover attack. After telling a Christian radio audience that "an openly known homosexual is somebody who probably wouldn't share my philosophy" -- a naked appeal to the homophobe vote, as well as an affront to the myriad Bush delegates and staffers who are gays and lesbians -- Bush openly played the gay card during the South Carolina primary debate. Asked why he would speak to Bob Jones University and not Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group, Bush falsely told the audience that he thought the Log Cabin Society had endorsed McCain. Sitting in the pressroom, Weaver couldn't believe his ears. "What a piece of shit," he said. "This has been going on in our party for a long time," says Weaver. "We always go to the dark side in order to wedge our way to victory. Like in California." He referred to a 1994 TV ad from Gov. Pete Wilson, who, in his promise to crack down on illegal immigration, showed "images of Hispanics scaling over walls." "When the going gets tough, our party plays to people's fears," says Weaver. "What we saw in South Carolina was just the latest example."
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