John McCain's War on the White House

We're ready for you, John," says Greg Stevens, a media consultant. He and Sen. John McCain stand on the grounds of a high school in Arizona, about to shoot a public-service announcement on gun safety. Stevens is best known for the infamous Dukakis-in-a-tank commercial, which helped George Bush win in 1988 by making Michael Dukakis look silly with an Army helmet engulfing his head. He also shot McCain's "biography" commercial, which captured the senator's life story — including his five and a half years in a Vietnam POW camp — in a thirty-second spot and introduced him to a national audience during last year's presidential campaign.

Through the years, McCain has shot so many of these, he delivers his lines with professional quality on the first take. But this spot, sponsored by the Americans for Gun Safety Foundation, will be shown in 2,500 movie theaters this summer, so they do a dozen or more takes before they're through.

McCain's interest in gun safety at this time cannot be separated from his bigger political agenda, which involves alliances with some of the most prominent Democrats in the Senate, including Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrats' 2000 vice-presidential nominee. In March, McCain approached Lieberman to co-sponsor a bill now called McCain-Lieberman, which proposes to close the gunshow loophole by requiring that customers at gun shows submit to background checks just as they would if they were buying a gun in a store, and Lieberman was happy to come on board. McCain's public-service announcement on guns will air at about the time McCain-Lieberman is introduced in the Senate.

Last February, the Arizona senator first showed how troublesome he could be to Bush when he won in a stunning landslide in New Hampshire. McCain could have pulled off the unthinkable and captured the Republican nomination had it not been for the South Carolina primary, which saw one of the nastiest clashes in recent American politics. Bush may have thought then that he had vanquished McCain, but now it seems their contest is only beginning.

This spring, during Bush's first 100 days, McCain went against the wishes of the White House by not only introducing but — against all odds — pushing through McCain-Feingold, the most sweeping campaign-finance reform to pass the Senate since the political overhaul brought on by the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. Now McCain is assembling an agenda on gun control, health care, the environment and more, with such strategically important Democrats as Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the rising star of his party, and elder statesman Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Why has McCain become so ardent on such typically Democratic issues as patients' rights? "Throughout the presidential campaign, people stood up at townhall meeting after townhall meeting and talked about how they had been mistreated by their HMOs," McCain says. "I promised them I'd do whatever I could to get a patients' bill of rights, so that the decisions are in the hands of doctors and not accountants. I feel an obligation here. I mean, just because I lost doesn't mean I renege on the commitments I made. I didn't say, 'By the way, if I win ...' I said, 'I promise you I'll do whatever I can.' "

His motivations may or may not be political as well, but one thing is certain. "John McCain is not going away," says one Republican insider. "If the Bush people had worked harder at salvaging the relationship with him, we wouldn't be in the position we are now. That was poor political strategy." More to the point, is there any way McCain could use a series of successes to run again for the presidency? "I don't think that John is thinking about it right now," says Peter Rinfret, one of McCain's national finance co-chairs in his 2000 presidential bid, "but I couldn't rule it out." Greg Stevens is more practical. "It's hard to see a scenario where he could run again, but you never say never," he contends. "But if he doesn't rule out running again, everyone is going to think everything he's doing is to run for president. He cares deeply about these issues."

John Weaver, McCain's chief political strategist, is passionate, if guarded. "Give us some credit for being smart," he says. "You can't think about running against a sitting president in the primaries." Why the distinction — in the primaries? "Because that's a distinction I want to make." Does that mean McCain would consider running as an Independent? "It's hard to imagine such a thing," Weaver says. "But if you ask any leading independent pollster not tied to the White House or the DNC, John McCain is the most popular political figure in the country. I do think, had we done that [run as an Independent] in 2000, we could have won."

With all of these iffy denials, has the McCain camp not at least contemplated another run for the presidency? According to one Republican source, two of Bush's key political advisers, Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, believe McCain will run against Bush in 2004. Weaver says there has been no discussion by the senator with his staff about running again for president. He adds, "Having said that, is it the unspeakable object in the room that we just don't address? Perhaps. Sometimes you've just got to let events take care of themselves."

As expected, McCain himself downplays any presidential ambitions. "It was the greatest experience of my life," he says on the schoolyard set. "It was wonderful. But I cannot envision running again. We captured a magic moment. There was an outpouring of affection. I'm sixty-four. I'd be sixty-eight if I ran again."

"Even in eight years, you'd only be seventy-two," I point out.

"Ugh," McCain says.

"How old was Ronald Reagan when he was first elected?"

"Seventy-something," McCain says.