Bitter to the End

Why does Arizona Sen. John S. McCain bear the Republican candidate George W. Bush such animosity? What kind of man is Bush? Can there be any doubt that he is a cokehead? However, asking this question needlessly complicates the issue, which is that Bush is of course a presidential candidate with grand aspirations. Aspirations to what, you may ask? To becoming the president and appointing lots of people to make important decisions about stuff that needs to be done. What kind of stuff? Ask him, not me. I'm sure he knows some of what he wants to do, and can probably look up the rest.

McCain braved the forces of his party leadership to defeat this anointed candidate, pledging to reform the political system if given the chance. I found his platform compelling for this reason alone, but his strategy of appealing to Democrats to win the Republican nomination seems tactically myopic, or at the very least, deserving of some other conjoined big words. And he lost.

Rather than pull out of the race like most defeated politicians would, though, McCain has only suspended his campaign until Bush presides at the GOP father-son picnic of a convention. The only reasons he must have for doing so are personal, not issue-based. After all, Bush is a Republican and thus more likely to advance the Republican platform than McCain. Granted, the two platforms are reasonably similar, with the only difference that the Democratic tilts slightly towards the impractical and disorganized left while the Republican tilts slightly towards the mean-spirited and bigoted right. Of course, the Internet throws a wrench into everyone's political calculus. No wait, it doesn't. My bad.

Still, McCain and Bush bear no love for each other, save for that love each of them holds in a cosmic sense for humanity in general. But just for a moment, assume that love for humanity is not motivating either of the candidates and come with me on a thought experiment into the relationship between these two enemies.

What exactly did Bush do to McCain to engender such bitterness? Attack ads? Everyone uses attack ads. Unfair spin? Politics always has been dirty, and no politicians can take these things personally without exploding. Sure, Bush ran a dirty campaign, but at the risk of sounding subjective, what else do you expect from a spoiled, dumb, rich, arrogant, sneering frat boy? Not that he'd be a bad president, so long as his advisors keep him from doing and/or touching anything.

So maybe Bush did something else to McCain. Perhaps he just kept on bothering him in his bus, making prank phone calls asking him where he could buy a ticket for the Straight Talk Express and then hanging up mischievously. Bush probably also kept on signing McCain up with different long distance companies, and maybe also invited him to really good movies he knew McCain wanted to see even though he knew McCain was campaigning that weekend. Frankly, I don't really know. Maybe they made plans to play laser tag but Bush cancelled at the last minute. At any rate, McCain feels enough animosity not to enthusiastically endorse the Republican candidate.

That such a die-hard Republican refuses to endorse the Republican candidate is almost as strange as legions of Democratic activists supporting someone only marginally less anti-abortion than a Christian Coalition bumper sticker. So what is it really that McCain and his eclectic supporters dislike so much about Bush?

Perhaps it is not so much divergent stances on issues that divide them as conceptions of power. McCain feels that power should derive from principles, Bush from tradition and money. McCain wants to see disenfranchised voices brought back into the political fold, Bush wants to be elected. McCain wants to realign the Republican party along less provincial and more democratic lines, Bush wants to cut taxes. These differences, more than any one issue, have both energized liberals to support McCain and energized McCain to hate Bush. It will be interesting to see if McCain--like a defeated Reagan in 1976--can achieve his ultimate goal of moving politics in general (but more specifically the Republican party) away from its clubby and exclusive structure, or whether this very structure, personified by the grey and plodding personality of Bush, will overwhelm his popular calls for reform.

Matthew M. Stoller '00 is a history concentrator in Mather House.