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Jewish World Review August 7, 2000 / 6 Menachem-Av, 5760

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The good soldier


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- PHILADELPHIA | Last Wednesday afternoon I caught an American moment. In this city's cavernous 30th Street Station, I found John McCain standing in line, unattended and unnoticed, for the 1 o'clock to Washington.

No cameramen hovered. No other reporter was in sight. None of the other travelers seemed to notice him. The man who had dominated this country's political buzz for much of this winter and spring was just another guy in a suit waiting for a train.

"It's too early," McCain greets me, perhaps to explain the stark disconnect between the balloons and ballyhoo in the Republican National Convention hall the night before and the apathy so abundant around us.

"Nobody's paying attention."

But what of McCain's own attention span, I wondered? A few hours earlier he had stood before thousands of delighted delegates to endorse his "friend" George W. Bush. He had done his duty to party and country. Now, like a mustered-out sailor, his body still punished by those seven years in that Hanoi prison, he is lugging his gear back home to Washington and the Senate.

Yet even in the afterglow of his Tuesday-night endorsement, McCain is contemptuous of the Bush high command. The same tough guys who bombed him, Dresden-like, in South Carolina seem strangely hesitant to finish off Democrat Al Gore now that they have the chance.

"Bush is not smart in not starting the debates early," McCain says, hoisting a heavy garment bag to his war-mangled shoulder. Why are they waiting until October to debate the enemy? Why not now, with all the polls showing Bush has the momentum at his back?

The poignancy and distress of McCain's departure from the GOP convention this Wednesday is nothing compared to the irony of his remaining importance. Smart people in both parties know that the decisive voters this November are those most excited by McCain. They are the "ethnic" voters who live among those inner suburbs that hug Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland. They are the struggling class of workers worried that their limited educations will be no match for the age of high technology that now looms at their local factory gates.

Congressman John Sweeney of Clifton Park, N.Y., knows these voters because he grew up among them. They include the guy with "maybe a few years of junior college, who just learned how to operate a computer because he wants to make a living."

These are the kinds of voters who connect with John McCain. Many of them ex-servicemen and Roman Catholic, they like McCain's gritty, maverick style, his deep and obvious patriotism.

Democratic strategist James Carville noted the powerful reaction from the crowd when McCain evoked those values here Tuesday night. "This place went deathly silent," the Clinton loyalist recalled. Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska senator and fellow Vietnam vet, was also struck by the convention's powerful response to his pal McCain: "'They were hanging on every word."

Hagel told me he had never heard McCain speak so personally about himself, or so emotionally of his commitment to a Republican victory this fall. McCain's warm words for Bush "absolve a lot of rancor" of the nomination battle, he said, referring to the Texas governor's controversial visit to Bob Jones University. "This was John McCain at his best."

Hagel said that McCain's Wednesday endorsement speech "brought closure to a chapter of his political career."

"How the next chapter begins or ends depends on many things, beginning with the results on November 7." Those results could well depend on how well George Bush uses his new "friend" and champion, John McCain, in the weeks between then and now. Letting him leave Philadelphia on Wednesday, angry and discarded, was a bad move. Summoning him back Thursday to share the Convention finale was a clumsy but good one.



JWR contributor Chris Matthews is the author of Hardball. and hosts a CNBC show of the same name. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

Up

08/02/00: Welcome to Philadelphia --- we had the first...
07/31/00: Bush-Cheney ticket: A constitutional problem
07/26/00: If Bush is an IPO, Gore is a store
07/24/00: Will being 'better' sink Hillary?
07/19/00: Pre-convention calm?
07/17/00: AlGore is executing a double dose of imitation 07/10/00: Mexicans elect a Bush Republican
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07/06/00: How Bubba's teapots clang
07/03/00: AlGore's latest hazard
06/29/00: No echoes in this presidential choice
06/26/00: Death joins the debate
06/21/00: Jerry Brown tells AlGore how to 'wage' campaign
06/19/00: Squishy logic for soft money
06/15/00: Citizen Kane, 113 years later
06/12/00: Kennedy-Nixon redux?
06/07/00: Bush says 'I do' to reality
06/05/00: Clinton's odd silence on his achievements
06/02/00: Pelosi, a voice for human rights
05/30/00: Bubba's escape hatches
05/23/00: Who typifies leadership?
05/19/00: Bubba's legacy involves AIDS
05/16/00: Dubyah's outlook for 'playoffs' remains perilous
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05/09/00: A Yale degree, a Bob Jones education
05/03/00: Show of force!
05/01/00: Abortion polls don't reflect reality
04/28/00: Bill Russell and American racism
04/24/00: Vietnam 25 -- The good, bad and ugly
04/19/00: Nader's threat to Gore in California
04/17/00: Berkeley politician visits with Elian's father
04/14/00: Clinton and the Castro curse
04/11/00: Men who saved Elián from the sea
04/06/00: Caine should coach politicians
04/03/00: No. 2 spots: Woman-to-woman?
03/29/00: Gray for veep and Gore might coast to victory
03/27/00: The secret life of a CIA wife
03/22/00: 'We're suckers for underdogs'
03/20/00: Bush's California dream vs. reality
03/06/00: Scary Gore vs. hopeful Bush
03/06/00: McCain's appeal to 'Reagan Democrats'
03/01/00: John McCain fits a hero's profile
02/28/00: Grading the American presidents
02/25/00: Clinton remains No. 1 issue
02/23/00: Will Ross Perot aid POW McCain?
02/18/00: McCain faces fury of GOP establishment
02/17/00: Citizen Springer
02/14/00: McCainia and the frisky independents
02/07/00: A prime-time primary for California
02/02/00: Clinton's final campaign: Take the blame
01/31/00: Which GOPer is willing to pay for his positions?
01/27/00: John McCain's gay radar
01/25/00: This time, candidates get 'authenticity' check
01/18/00: AIDS dooms 1 in 4 in tiny Swaziland
01/13/00: Complacency might be the campaign key
01/10/00: A choice, not an echo
01/06/00: The role of a lifetime
01/03/00: Dangers in Gore's dirty war
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12/28/99: Candidate Gore's separation anxiety
12/17/99: Catch 22: Leading candidates don't lead
12/17/99: New Democratic leader on the horizon
12/15/99: Is Hillary clueless?
12/08/99: Taking Buchananism to the streets
12/03/99: Why are we so obsessed with 'spin'?
12/01/99: Donald Trump, 'Sinatra of Steel'
11/29/99: Why AlGore will be our next president
11/23/99: After the fall
11/17/99: Our conveniently forgetful president
11/15/99: Next president: Male, WASP, self-selected
11/10/99: Backroom Bill
11/08/99: Please don't feed the 'pander bears'
11/03/99: Battle of the Bubba clones
11/01/99: Pat Buchanan, kamikaze candidate
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10/25/99: The Curse of the Bubba
10/21/99: GOP gives Clinton his finest hour
10/18/99: Clinton's last hurrah
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10/11/99: Gore targets Bradley's strength
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10/04/99: Buchanan, Churchill and Hitler
09/30/99: Who'll spin political gold in Golden State — Gore or Bradley?
09/27/99: Here's a millennial checklist for candidates
09/22/99: The biography battle
09/20/99: Buchanan's new book is a must-read
09/15/99: Don't rule out Beatty
09/13/99: The man with the sun on his face
09/08/99: W. vs. Jr. on dope and the draft
The FALN: Hillary's Willie Horton
08/26/99: Bill's guilt fuels Hill's race
08/25/99: The seemingly inexhaustible strength of America's free enterprise
08/23/99: GOP candidates are weak also-rans
08/16/99: Bubba on Bubba
08/11/99: Hillary's agonizing attempts to understand
08/09/99: With warm regards, Richard Nixon
08/04/99: Weicker: real third party is on the Left
08/02/99: Dubyah's last hangover
07/27/99: Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh; capitalism is gonna win

© 2000, NEA