On an unseasonably warm winter day in 1974, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., California governor Ronald Reagan delivered a speech that is often cited today as a founding document of Reagan-style optimism.
He quoted John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who in 1630 declared: “We will be a city upon a hill.” Reagan described the uniqueness of the American character and challenged those who suggested the United States was in decline. He concluded his remarks this way:
John McCain remembers those words and the ones Reagan spoke moments earlier to open his speech.
John McCain is not Ronald Reagan. In fact, where Reagan ultimately created a governing conservative coalition, McCain’s success in the early GOP primaries has threatened to tear it apart. But absent a dramatic turn of events, McCain will be like Reagan in one very important respect: He will be the presidential nominee of the Republican party.
When John McCain first ran for president, back in 2000, he won the New Hampshire primary by 18 points, briefly forestalling George W. Bush’s seemingly inevitable victory. Bush had more money. He had the big name and the big-name advisers. Other elected officials boasted about their invitations to the governor’s mansion in Austin and tripped over themselves to endorse Bush. McCain’s win–and the size of it–shocked the political world. And no one was more surprised than McCain himself.
For months, McCain had run a carefree campaign. There were no expectations, so there was no pressure. Then he won New Hampshire, and he was, as Tucker Carlson wrote in these pages, “the dog who caught the car.”
Carlson described McCain, just moments after his New Hampshire victory, looking sullen and anxious as he waited for an interview with CNN’s Larry King.
On his campaign bus two days before last week’s Florida primary, I reminded McCain of those dark moments of his last campaign, the days right after he won, and asked him if he just prefers to be the underdog. He started with a hearty laugh, took a bite of a Nature Valley Oats ‘N Honey granola bar, and grew quiet.
“I feel good about our campaign,” he said before pausing for almost ten seconds.
That little bit of self-reflection–“I’ve always kind of relished the fight”–probably better explains John McCain’s unusual political life and curious ideological journey than anything an outside observer has ever said or written. McCain has been described as a “maverick” so often that writers consciously avoid the cliché. Yet it’s still true.
Today, McCain is a maverick because he often publicly challenges Republican orthodoxies–on tax cuts, the environment, the funding of campaigns. Well, back when the Vietnam war was gradually drawing to a close, being a conservative and a hawk wasn’t enough. McCain found himself at odds with a Republican establishment that had given the nation wage and price controls. In 1976, when the party nominated Gerald Ford, McCain pronounced himself a “proud Reagan conservative.”
In Congress, first as a member of the House of Representatives and later in the Senate, McCain compiled a voting record that could only be described as conservative. But as his party moved to the right, after Republicans took over Congress and later consolidated federal power under George W. Bush, McCain increasingly found himself publicly at odds with his party.
Of course, this can be–and often is–overstated. On most issues McCain votes with his party. And sometimes he finds himself virtually alone to the right of his colleagues, as he has for years on reducing spending and as he did at many critical moments of the Iraq war.
Indeed, one could argue that McCain has never been more of a maverick, more antiestablishment, than on Iraq. He called for more troops and a change in strategy almost immediately after the invasion. As he is fond of reminding voters, McCain was critical of Donald Rumsfeld years before President Bush nudged him aside in November 2006. And McCain was an early and vocal proponent of a change of strategy that included more troops. He urged this in the face of calls for withdrawal from Democrats, political worries from fellow Republicans, and open scorn from the news media.
Iraq was once again at the center of the political debate last week, after McCain accused Mitt Romney of supporting “secret timetables” for withdrawal. Romney denied the accusation and complained that McCain’s attacks were dishonest. Many in the media agreed with Romney and criticized McCain.
McCain didn’t care. He discussed the flap aboard his bus as we traveled from rally to rally in Florida.
At the time [of Romney’s remarks] it was whether we were going to stay or go. And that’s what it was all about. “Timetables” was the buzzword and everybody knows it. . . . “Timetables” was the codeword for “bailout.” . . . It has to be viewed in the context of the time and what was going on at the time–that was, everybody wanted out. Nobody but a few of us said we not only can’t get out, we can’t set timetables, we’ve got to increase troops. We’ve got to have the surge.
As he spoke, McCain fingered a 3×5 index card with the exact words Romney had used. In speeches and in discussions with journalists, McCain fights the accusation that he distorted Romney’s words by simply reading the words verbatim. When he finishes, he raises his eyebrows to affect an expression that says: See?
Not everyone does. But that doesn’t bother him.
“I’ve always kind of relished the fight.”
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
