The Crossed Pond

One of the issues that John McCain could have been—even should have been—put to the fire on in the Republican primary is the contention that, in 2000/2001, John McCain was in active negotiations with the Democratic caucus about whether or not he might drop his Republican party affiliation and become an Independent, caucusing with the Democrats. The story was well sourced and meshed entirely with how most of us remember those months and the rumblings coming down The Hill. For those of us who are big supporters of McCain’s 2000 Presidential bid, and who had become John McCain fans through that, such as myself, it was more or less an open secret, and the “will he / won’t he?” question was very much a live issue. It was a time too when Democrats were openly being approached by fence-sitting Republicans such as Chaffee and Jim Jeffords (who did make the switch). McCain, coming off a very nasty loss that he took quite personally in the 2000 primary, and prior to to the 2002 cycle when GWOT fever took hold, and then 2004 when he reinvented himself (again) as a “party man”, certainly had every reason to consider it at the time. So, pretty much everything about the story jibes.

McCain, for his part, dismisses it out of hand.

Which would mean that ex-Sen. Daschle and ex-Rep. Tom Downey are literally just making the whole thing up and lying through their teeth. A charge that seems…unlikely.

Is the story true? McCain denies ever having considered caucusing with Dems, but the story is hard to dismiss out of hand. Indeed, Downey and Daschle had little reason to make up the story 10 months ago, when it initially ran.

Indeed, Downey denied any political motivation, saying he is still friends with Weaver [McCain's longtime chief political strategist and who Downey says approached them] and “deeply respects” McCain. “I would have been happy to come forward last year or the year before if someone had asked … There were meetings in offices. You can’t deny [these meetings took place]. They occurred.”

Downey added, “It’s my hope that John McCain is the Republican nominee because from my perspective, although I think Democrats are going to win, if they don’t, McCain is the sort of man I would feel comfortable [with] as the president of the United States. I’m not trying to hurt him.”

The alternative, of course, is that it’s McCain who is just flat-out lying through his teeth on this one. And frankly, that seems infinitely more likely in this case, at least from everything I’ve gleaned.

Now, for me at least, that he was considering the switch recommends him, rather than denigrates him. That he completely reinvented himself afterwards as Mr. Republican McCain 2.0 is a point on which I’m still a little sour (if for no other reason than during the time when we most needed a strong independent voice crying out in the Republican caucus, McCain shelved his maverick persona and became a rah-rah Bush supporter and leading voice of pushing forward with Iraq and restructuring our society to give up freedom for security). But, I certainly wouldn’t hold it against him in the least if the story was true. In fact, it’s one of the elements of his history I like most.

I wonder if fence-sitting right-wing voters still unsure if they can get behind McCain will feel the same way.

The story has briefly popped back up and barely hit the mainstream radar this last week. Josh Marshall, however, wonders if we’ve seen the last of it. Particularly given that Senator Tom Daschle, in the months following the story originally breaking, has become a big Obama guy and a key insider figure in his campaign.

McCain holds an odd role in that sense. He clearly just flat-out dislikes a lot of people and strands of his party. But he also very clearly wants and needs to paint himself as a party man, someone akin to Bob Dole (in the good way). How he manages to handle that in the general election, and how his history will play out and be defined by voters (and by which voters) will be an interesting thing to watch, an interesting line for both his supporters and his detractors to walk. Because there have been different versions of John McCain active at different times, at least in terms of his partisan loyalties; it’ll be both hard to pin the man down, and easy to swipe at him from all sides.

The liberal activist crowd, for their part, have already made clear which McCain they’re running against. If he does draw a challenge from the right, even if it’s just in the form of an unenthusiastic base, McCain will be in the curious position of having to defend how Republican he is to one group, and how Republican he’s not to another. Maybe that’s true for any general election candidate, but it takes on a particularly weird construction with John McCain.

Like I said, be interesting to see how that plays out.