Can't We All Just Get Along?

Less than 12 hours after polls closed on Super Tuesday, the press corps covering John McCain gathered in a hangar at Swift Aviation in Phoenix, Arizona, for another press conference. The focus, as it had been for more than a week, was on one question: How will John McCain repair the breach with the conservatives who have been so vociferously critical of his candidacy?

Reporters were obsessed with it. The McCain campaign was not. For weeks, McCain advisers had spoken with confidence about the inevitable coalescing around their man once he became the presumptive nominee.

Senator Lindsey Graham arrived as reporters waited. Graham is McCain's closest friend in the Senate and a trusted adviser. He is very quotable and very willing to be quoted, so reporters flock to him. Informal chats become impromptu press conferences.

And so it was last Wednesday, a few minutes after 9 A.M. As Graham started to answer questions, reporters pulled out their notebooks and turned on their audio recorders. Soon, television cameras and their bright lights were trained on Graham's face as he praised McCain for his leadership and made a case that McCain will be a strong nominee.

McCain, Graham said, will be able to present a "conservatism that is not a threat, that will be attractive to Reagan Democrats and independents." It was a telling description. Just as George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" bothered some conservatives--aren't most conservatives compassionate?--selling McCain as the nonthreatening conservative implies that other conservatives are threatening.

Moments later Joe Lieberman arrived. Some of the reporters hovering around Graham wandered over to Lieberman. The Connecticut senator, a former Democrat, said the key to a McCain victory would be his bipartisan appeal. "The important thing to win this election is to win the majority of independents and some Democrats. Senator McCain is a devoted Republican, but has always worked across party lines."

McCain walked up next, looking relaxed. He was wearing a navy sport coat, gray dress slacks, and a blue shirt without a tie. As always, McCain patiently tried to take a question from any reporter who wanted to ask one. He struck some conservative notes. He boasted of his "fundamental conservative philosophy" and said raising taxes would be "the worst thing we could do to our economy."

But many of his answers sounded the same bipartisan theme that had emerged from the exchanges with Graham and Lieberman. I used my question to press him on one possible source of the mistrust between McCain and movement conservatives: his demeanor.

McCain had just defended his record by citing his high ratings from the conservative groups Citizens Against Government Waste and Citizens for a Sound Economy. I suggested we stipulate that his record is more conservative than some of his critics have claimed. Then I asked McCain about the perception that he enjoys sticking his fingers in the eyes of conservatives when he disagrees with them--while he takes pleasure in working with Democrats. McCain didn't address the first claim and defended himself against the second.

"The most compelling moment in all this campaign in many respects--not all, many--was standing on the stage with Joe Lieberman," he said. McCain highlighted his willingness to work with Democrats and touted his ability to work "across the aisle" as a strength. Conservatives, he said, appreciate it, too. "One thing I'm convinced of, without a doubt, is that conservatives are glad when Joe Lieberman and I worked together in establishing the 9/11 Commission and then moved and got many of their recommendations into law."

Setting aside that specific claim (I'm not convinced he is right), McCain's answer was interesting because it seemed to affirm the premise of the question. And one major difference between McCain and other conservatives is that he sees bipartisanship as both a means to an end and an end in itself. Most conservatives do not.

There were other differences, too, and they would be heavily scrutinized the following day, in what would be McCain's biggest speech of the campaign so far.

As former senator George Allen spoke from the podium at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington last Thursday, offering his surprise endorsement of McCain's presidential bid shortly before the Arizona senator took the stage, a McCain advance staffer in a sharp navy blue suit quietly approached the CPAC dignitaries sitting in the first two rows of chairs in the cavernous ballroom. "I'm going to need you all to move," the McCain aide said. "Those seats are reserved for the congressmen and senators supporting Senator McCain."

No one budged.