[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Bearhug Politics: Careful Steps to a New Bush-McCain Alliance

[michael at intrafi.com]

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by michael at intrafi.com.



/--------- E-mail Sponsored by Fox Searchlight ------------\

 I HEART HUCKABEES - OPENING IN SELECT CITIES OCTOBER 1

 From David O. Russell, writer and director of THREE KINGS
 and FLIRTING WITH DISASTER comes an existential comedy
 starring Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Hupert, Jude Law, Jason
 Schwartzman, Lily Tomlin, Mark Wahlberg and Naomi Watts.
 Watch the trailer now at:

 http://www.foxsearchlight.com/huckabees/index_nyt.html

\----------------------------------------------------------/


Bearhug Politics: Careful Steps to a New Bush-McCain Alliance

August 21, 2004
 By TODD S. PURDUM 



 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 - It was one of the odder embraces in
American politics since Sammy Davis Jr. hugged Richard M.
Nixon at the Republican Convention 32 years ago this
summer: George W. Bush and John McCain's back-wrapping
bearhug and side-head-smooch on the campaign trail last
week. 

For most of the past four years, Mr. McCain and the man who
beat him for the Republican nomination in a bitter campaign
in 2000 have treated each other like a pair of reversed
magnets, members of the same metallurgical family held
apart by reciprocal repulsion. Now their locked arms are
raising eyebrows. 

"Don't make people who hate you hug you," Bill Maher joked
on the HBO program "Real Time." "Whatever the Bush
administration is blackmailing John McCain with, stop!" 

The newfound friendship may be good for late-night laughs,
but it is deadly serious political business for both men,
the result of a deliberate, months-long effort by the White
House to woo the Arizona senator - the most popular
national political figure in the country - and of Mr.
McCain's self-interested susceptibility to same. The
turnabout could not be more striking, and for both men the
stakes could be nothing less than the presidency itself. 

Four years ago, relations were so strained that Mr. McCain
left the Republican convention in Philadelphia two days
early, returning for the final night only after a
last-minute request by the Bush team. This year, he will
have a prime-time speaking slot on the convention's first
night in New York City, play host to the network anchors at
a private dinner the day before, campaign with the
president in several states the day after, speak to 10 or
15 state delegations and preside over a celebrity party
with the comedian Darrell Hammond on the eve of Mr. Bush's
re-nomination. 

So what's up? Pure political physics, friends of both men
say. 

Mr. Bush is locked in a tight race with Mr. McCain's old
Senate friend John Kerry and needs all the belated help he
can get with the moderate, Democratic and independent
voters who like Mr. McCain. And Mr. McCain, who has spent
months earning the ire of his party by saying nice things
about Mr. Kerry and nasty ones about some Bush policies, is
eager to show, like Dr. Seuss's punctilious pachyderm, that
he may have meant what he said and said what he meant, but
"an elephant's faithful 100 percent." 

Whether Mr. Bush wins or loses, the Republican race for the
White House will be wide open in 2008, and while Mr. McCain
has often suggested he would not run again, politicians
never really mean never. As he learned in 2000, Mr. McCain
could not win the nomination without broader backing from
the party establishment than his independence sometimes
allows. 

"John is so sharp," said former Senator Alan K. Simpson of
Wyoming. "I think he knows that whatever his future is, it
can never go anywhere unless he's seen as supportive of the
party and supportive of the president, and anything else
will abort whatever he may have in mind." 

And what can Mr. McCain do for the president? 

"A lot,"
Mr. Simpson said, "because he knows the power of John
McCain, he's felt the sting of that before himself, and I
think he's gratified and genuinely pleased and very happy
that John will do this. We need all the horses in the
corral for this one, I'll tell you." 

The thaw began last spring, just around the time that Mr.
McCain allowed the fantasy of his becoming Mr. Kerry's
running mate to flourish for a news cycle or two, and the
Kerry camp did its best to keep the idea alive for weeks.
All the excitement about national unity was not lost on Mr.
Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, who offered an
olive branch to John Weaver, one of Mr. McCain's closest
advisers. Mr. Rove and Mr. Weaver were compatriots turned
sworn enemies dating to their days in Republican politics
in Texas. 

At Mr. Rove's invitation, he and Mr. Weaver met at a
Caribou Coffee shop across from the White House, hashed out
some differences, and "you can see where we are today," as
one longtime McCain confidant put it on condition of
anonymity. Mr. McCain's first joint appearance with Mr.
Bush came on a Western swing in mid-June, where Mr. Bush
first surprised him with an enveloping hug and a whisper in
the ear, McCain aides said. 

But by the time of their embrace in Pensacola, Fla., last
week, Mr. McCain seemed entirely complicit, reaching out
his own arms toward the president, who pecked him on the
temple. 

"I wouldn't characterize either man as a hug victim," said
Mr. Weaver, who now works mostly for Democrats but was
conducting a pre-convention walk-through of Madison Square
Garden with the Bush team this week. "I think they were
mutual hugs, and mutual looking forward." 

Mr. Bush's campaign spokeswoman, Nicolle Devenish, said, "I
don't think either man is capable of pretense." 

In fact, the logic of the love-fest is simple enough on
both sides. No national politician can touch Mr. McCain's
lopsided favorable ratings of 39 percent to 9 percent
unfavorable in the most recent New York Times/CBS News
poll. And Mr. McCain, for all his maverick qualities,
remains a Republican at heart, one who has steadfastly
supported Mr. Bush's broad national security policy since
Sept. 11, 2001, even while dissenting over some of the
administration's execution and vigorously critiquing
domestic policies like taxes and limits on stem-cell
research. 

"I'm proud to be traveling with John McCain," Mr. Bush said
in Panama City, Fla., last week. "What a fantastic American
he is." In Pensacola, Mr. McCain returned the favor, saying
Mr. Bush had "led with moral clarity and firm resolve." 

Mr. McCain was traveling in Ukraine and unavailable for
comment, his office said, but another of his longtime
advisers, Rick Davis, insisted that the alliance was not so
hard to understand. "I think what they've found is McCain
doesn't upset their conservative base, because he's a
conservative," he said. "He's both a religious
conservative, he's pro-life - you couldn't run a thread
between his position on abortion and Bush's - and yet at
the same time he speaks to a much broader audience
politically. So why not hang around with that guy?" 

Another longtime McCain adviser suggested, on condition of
anonymity in a sign that the new alliance had not
completely ended all one-upmanship, that Mr. Bush's embrace
had effectively empowered Mr. McCain to keep speaking out.
"It's almost liberating," the adviser said, "because they
also need him to continue to be independent." 

>From that challenge, Mr. McCain has not shrunk. Since
joining the president on the trail, he has attacked Mr.
Bush's proposal to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex
marriage as "antithetical in every way to the core
philosophy of Republicans." He has called on the president
to denounce commercials by some supporters questioning Mr.
Kerry's Vietnam service, describing the advertisement as
"the same kind of deal that was pulled on me," in 2000 by
Bush supporters. 

Mr. Bush has so far ignored Mr. McCain's demand to condemn
the advertisements, and Mr. McCain has declined to discuss
whatever he may have privately urged the president to do.
All that has left some Democrats skeptical about the whole
arrangement, and may create some risk that Mr. McCain will
alienate the very swing voters who so admire him. 

"Bush is so desperate to ride Senator McCain's wave that
he's taking the idea of kiss and makeup a little too far,"
said Mr. Kerry's spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter. "Maybe now
he'll take McCain's advice and denounce the dishonest and
dishonorable ads attacking Kerry's military record." 

Stuart Starky, an eighth-grade teacher in South Phoenix who
is the Arizona Democrats' long-shot challenger to Mr.
McCain's own re-election this fall, has his own theory. "I
truly believe he's going to run for president again," Mr.
Starky said in a telephone interview. "It's an open seat
for the Republicans either way, and this is his way of
saying, 'Win or lose, I'm with the team.' " 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/21/politics/campaign/21mccain.html?ex=1094112385&ei=1&en=bf9b3a0f671338d6


---------------------------------

Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine
reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like!
Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy
now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here:

http://homedelivery.nytimes.com/HDS/SubscriptionT1.do?mode=SubscriptionT1&ExternalMediaCode=W24AF



HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters 
or other creative advertising opportunities with The 
New York Times on the Web, please contact
onlinesales at nytimes.com or visit our online media 
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo

For general information about NYTimes.com, write to 
help at nytimes.com.  

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company