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Jewish World Review Feb. 18, 2000 / 12 Adar I, 5760
Chris Matthews
"We're going to take the influence of big money and
special interests out of Washington," he said here at
Clemson University on Wednesday.
"We're going to break the iron triangle of money,
lobbyists and legislation, and give the government back to
these young people. They're the ones that deserve it, and
they're going to get it when I'm president of the United
States."
Surrounding the bantam senator and former Vietnam
POW on the TV-lit stage were hundreds of applauding,
gung-ho students.
But they are not the hurricane, merely the voices trying
their damnedest to rise above it.
A more menacing storm of anger belts through South
Carolina these days before the Feb. 19 primary. It's the
wild and angry forces of the GOP establishment. It's the
Republicans McCain's insurgent campaign has threatened
and aroused. It's composed of the Republican big shots
from the U.S. Senate and every state capital. It's the
corporate power boys who don't mind paying the toll in
D.C. as long as they get value for it. It's the country-club
types Mommy and Daddy taught from birth to bar the
door to mavericks like McCain.
This battle, the lonely rebel against the long-powerful party establishment, is the
high drama of the South Carolina primary. The story line is worthy of "Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington."
Just as in the old movie, the machine is fighting back. Each day down here the
newspapers and airwaves carry the Republican power boys' continuing
fusillade: "McCain's no better than us," cry the Bush loyalists. "He's chairman of
a Senate committee. He, too, is a Washingtonian!"
But McCain's great edge in this fight for the Republican presidential nomination
is that he looks nothing like the fellow his rivals describe. A Navy pilot in
Vietnam, he endured 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war and returned with honor.
A U.S. senator from Arizona, he is best known for his fights against big
tobacco and his championship of campaign finance reform.
McCain's best advertisement for his relative cleanliness is, of course, the
cotillion of enemies he has recruited:
Against these forces, McCain has formed a new legion of political
independents: reform-minded, romantic-hearted Republicans, political
independents, and, yes, Democrats too desperate for a hero to let political
correctitude detain them.
Being a real-life figure rather than one confected by Hollywood, this hero has
his flaws. Citing states' rights, he refuses to attack the Confederate battle flag
flying over the South Carolina capitol, though he is willing to call "crazy" a
recent Vermont decision saying laws cannot discriminate against same-sex
couples.
A man of no recognizable prejudice, he nonetheless defends the "don't ask,
don't tell" rule for military service by gays.
Despite his tone of conciliation and moderation on abortion rights, he still gives
lip-service to its abolition.
Even on the issue upon which he has founded his campaign, McCain stands a
tad tainted. He rightly condemns the "iron triangle" of lobbyists who raise
money for politicians, then return with clients asking for special consideration.
Yet he wrongly continues to raise money from the same chauffeur-driven,
car-phoning motorcade of tanned, slicked-back operators who roam
Washington's infamous "Gucci gulch."
"If they want to give me money, that's fine," he confesses to the charge of taking
lobbyist money, "but that doesn't mean that I'm doing anything for them. My
message is clear. If they don't get it, they've been on Mars!"
Like young Jefferson Smith of movie lore, he now feels the white heat reserved
for those to dare to challenge a political machine. Watching to see who buckles
first, this man McCain or the Republican electoral machine, has given us the
highest political drama since the
02/17/00: Citizen Springer
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