Despite Spotlight, McCain May Find Senate More Icy

Sen. John McCain is preparing to return to his day job--a place in the very establishment he has been trashing in his failed presidential campaign.

His reception among Senate Republicans may be as tense as a blueblood family’s welcome for a wayward son who has cut tire tracks across the manicured lawn.

But Republicans’ ill will toward the senator from Arizona is tempered by the fact that he has emerged from defeat a far more commanding public figure than when he left a year ago for what seemed then like a quixotic presidential campaign. The once obscure lawmaker with a relatively thin record of legislative accomplishment is suddenly a powerful national voice for political reform, almost a cult figure who will be signing autographs for a long time to come.

That could increase his influence in the Senate--but only if his colleagues are willing to forgive and forget his slashing attacks on Congress, party leaders, even some colleagues by name on the campaign trail.

“He didn’t just burn bridges; he doused them with gas, lit them on fire and did a jig as he watched it burn,” said Michael Scanlon, a political consultant who until recently was a top aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), a key supporter of Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

A key question is whether McCain can heal those wounds and use the political capital he has accumulated to advance his agenda--campaign finance reform, eliminating government waste and limiting tax cuts--any more effectively than before he ran for president. He certainly plans to try. “I will take our campaign back to the U.S. Senate,” he declared, unbowed, as he announced the suspension of his candidacy Thursday.

‘A Very Tough Transition’

But McCain faces a big adjustment as he goes from the national sound stage to the more insular, sometimes hidebound Senate.

“It’s a very tough transition, especially if you come as close to winning as McCain did,” said Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), who ran for president in 1996. Gramm is just one of the many members of Congress who have shared the potentially deflating experience of returning to Congress after a failed presidential campaign. Some flourished; some foundered.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) returned to the Senate after losing his 1980 White House bid and then embarked on a long, productive legislative career. Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) rebounded from his 1988 loss and is now House minority leader, one step from the speakership. Gary Hart, by contrast, ended his Senate career two years after his failed 1984 presidential bid. It’s hard to imagine McCain caving in to defeat and quietly fading from the scene.

But McCain has some fences to mend because he did so much during the campaign to alienate his colleagues. The centerpiece of his campaign was his critique of the campaign finance system and the political establishment that sustains it.

A Political Family Feud

McCain cited individual senators as exemplars of the establishment: In Washington state, he feuded with Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) over pork-barrel spending. In New Hampshire, he called his primary victory a triumph over Sen. Judd Gregg’s “machine.” In Virginia, he taunted Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) as well as Gov. James S. Gilmore before the state’s primary: “I say to the Gilmore-Warner machine: Hasta la vista, baby!” He launched a harsh attack on Bob Jones University, creating political problems for a handful of members of Congress with degrees from the school, including Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.).

“That obscure institution I am an alumnus of is no longer obscure,” said Hutchinson. “But I’m not going to let it be a barrier between he and I.”

Indeed, when it looked like McCain might win the Republican nomination, many of his colleagues were uncharacteristically candid in their criticism of him. Now that he’s lost, they are making a concerted effort to take a more conciliatory posture when he returns.

“There’s concern there might be some lingering hard feelings,” said Hutchinson. “Republicans will bend over backward to give him a warm welcome.”

Even before McCain withdrew from the race, Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.), a top GOP leader, last week urged his colleagues in a closed-door party meeting to bury the hatchet and welcome McCain with open arms, a Nickles aide said.

The Senate can be a particularly forgiving place, if the experience of Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) is any indication. Smith last year abandoned the Republican Party to run for president as an independent, lambasting the party on his way out the door. After his campaign collapsed, he switched back to the GOP and, showing no hard feelings, the party promoted him to chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Still, some senators acknowledge that McCain’s return may strain the institution’s famed rituals of gentility. “Our collegiality will be tested,” said Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), a member of the GOP leadership. “But my guess is it will survive intact.”

McCain returns to his post of chairman of the Commerce Committee, where there has been some impatient finger-drumming about legislative delays in his absence. For example, an important piece of airport legislation was stalled for so long that Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) finally intervened to break an impasse and asked other committee members to take charge of the bill. Returning to the committee chairmanship gives McCain instant entree into some of the issues he has addressed on the campaign trail, including government regulation of electronic commerce.

Will He Pursue Anti-Pork Agenda?

McCain is coming back to Congress just in time for the beginning of the annual debate over the budget. For years, McCain has combed Congress’ spending bills and attacked provisions he sees as wasteful pork-barrel spending--an argument he brought to a much wider audience in the campaign and that will doubtless get more attention in the Senate now.

A key question is whether McCain will pursue his anti-pork crusade with undiminished vigor or whether he will pull his punches, chastened by campaign criticism.

In another key area, McCain allies hope his increased stature will help advance the cause of campaign finance reform in Congress.

“When he gets up to speak about pork or campaign reform, it’s going to have a spotlight focus that other senators don’t get and hasn’t been there before for him,” said Norman J. Ornstein, a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute who has worked with McCain on campaign finance reform. “He came to the presidential campaign as a loner without a following; now he has a national following.”

One thing his campaign experience is not likely to change: McCain’s blunt, sometimes tactless approach to dealing with adversaries. That style, even before the campaign, irritated many of his colleagues, but it appealed to many voters.

“He was the outsider candidate because he spent all his time here pissing off his colleagues and doing what he wants,” said Mark Buse, staff director of the Senate Commerce Committee. “He’s going to continue to do that. Nothing has changed.”

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George W. Bush asks Al Gore to clarify role in raising funds at White House in 1995. A18