It's My Party (26 page)

Now consider Bush’s electoral advantages. He already commands the support of Texas, the second-most populous state in the
nation. His brother, Jeb, is governor of Florida, giving Bush an edge in the fourth-most populous state. And given Bush’s
appeal among Hispanics, he stands a good chance of carrying California, the most populous state. What Republicans therefore
see in George W. Bush is something they haven’t had in a long time now—when my research assistant, a sophomore at Stanford,
mentioned that he was just seven the last time a Republican captured the White House, I realized just how long: a presidential
candidate who can win.

Yet the question that I asked myself after meeting Bush lingers in many Republican minds all the same. Why isn’t his character
more sharply defined? Why doesn’t it have more heft? I myself found that the question of Bush’s character troubled me most
when I compared him with a man who, like him, was born into privilege and then, like him, devoted himself to public service.
The person I had in mind was his father.

By the time President Bush was as old as Governor Bush, he had served as a pilot in the Second World War, helped to build
up the Republican Party in a Texas that was still solidly Democratic, and played a leading role in the decisive struggle of
the second half of the twentieth century, the Cold War, confronting the Soviets as our ambassador at the United Nations. Compared
with his father, it seemed to me, George W. Bush looked slight.

Then I had a disconcerting thought. Precisely the same could be said about me when compared with my own father. By the time
he was my age, my father had worked his way through the Great Depression by digging ditches with a road crew, the only job
he could find once he left high school, spent more than four years at sea during the Second World War, then returned home
to marry and, without ever having had the chance to go to college, enter the workforce to support his family.

My point, of course, is that our parents and we—by “we” I mean my fellow baby boomers and I—had two entirely different sets
of formative experiences. Our parents overcame the Depression, defeated Hitler, rebuilt the American economy, and sustained
a long and finally successful struggle against the Soviet Union. Tom Brokaw’s book about our parents,
The Greatest Generation
, spent weeks on the best-seller list because it captured the truth. The events that shaped our parents made them into giants.
We came of age during a long run of peace and prosperity. Our parents wanted it this way. They worked long and hard to give
us just the world in which we grew up. The United States was secure. It provided a rapidly rising standard of living for its
citizens. Peace and material well-being were, so to speak, our inheritance. But now we face the same question that always
faces kids who inherit a lot. How can we live up to our old men?

The valid comparison isn’t between George W. Bush and his father. It’s between George W. Bush and members of our own generation.
Compare Bush with me, and he looks good enough to have his face carved on Mount Rushmore. Compare Bush with his opponents
for the Republican presidential nomination and, I would contend, he still looks pretty good.

Steve Forbes? I admire the boldness with which Forbes articulated an explicitly conservative agenda. But suggesting that voters
send him directly from
Forbes
, a magazine that he and his brothers inherited, to the Oval Office? You could call that audacity. You could also call it
lousy judgment. Steve Forbes should have run for the senate from New Jersey. I hope he still does. Gary Bauer? Alan Keyes?
Both contributed to the campaign by raising the level of debate. But if either ever thought the voters should actually make
him president, he was guilty of the same lousy judgment as Steve Forbes.

Now I come to John McCain.

McCain’s five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi set him apart from other baby boomers, needless to say. But while
McCain seldom fails to display his remarkable past—photographs of McCain in his flying gear are often in evidence when he
speaks, and McCain himself drops references to his years as a POW throughout his remarks—he is always a little vague when
he describes the future. On foreign policy, he sounds emphatic enough, but his views lack any overall coherence. He announced
his tax plan weeks after Bush made public his own plan, and an economist friend who has studied the McCain offering tells
me that the numbers still don’t quite add up. Of course there is a reason for this. McCain pays little attention to policy
because he understands that it is peripheral to his campaign. The man of character is running on character alone.

One McCain supporter I know granted every charge against McCain that I made. The tobacco deal that McCain supported in the
Senate amounted to little better than a gigantic tax hike on smokers, mostly people of modest means. His campaign finance
proposal is flatly unconstitutional. His tax plan would cut taxes by even less than the amount President Clinton proposed
in his last state of the union address.

“Look, my issue profile fits a lot better with George W. Bush,” the McCain supporter said, “and I’m totally against McCain
on his tax plan. But the issues threshold is lower these days. We’re not running in 1980. History no longer hangs in the balance.
What the American people want after eight years of Bill Clinton is to take a shower.”

By “take a shower,” he of course meant repudiate Bill Clinton by defeating Al Gore. Fine and good. Lord knows I’d like to
see Republicans do just that. But defeating Al Gore would require just one day, election day. Afterward, McCain would have
almost three months to fill before taking his oath of office, then four years to get through before his term as president
ended. Is it too much to ask how he would pass the time? What I see when I look at McCain, in short, is a curious paradox.
By running on character alone, McCain is demonstrating a lack of character itself.

By contrast, George W. Bush has assembled a national campaign organization, an undertaking that none of his opponents, including
McCain, who at this writing is still putting his state organizations together on the fly, ever even attempted. He has gathered
knowledgeable advisers on every aspect of national policy. He has announced a tax plan that goes to the trouble of making
certain the numbers all add up, an intricate exercise that, as I’ve said, McCain still hasn’t bothered to get right. He has
detailed a foreign policy that amounts to the most impressive statement of American ends, and of the means we will need to
accomplish those ends, put forward by any politician since the Cold War.

Bush’s positions lie squarely within the Republican tradition—and Republicans know it. Add up the Republican vote in the primaries
that have taken place as of this writing—New Hampshire, Delaware, South Carolina, Michigan, and Arizona—and you’ll find that
Bush defeats McCain by six percentage points. Toss in the Independent vote. Bush is still ahead, outpacing McCain by four
percentage points. Only when you add the votes cast by Democrats—Democrats, mind you—does McCain come out on top.

Now, if John McCain wins the Republican presidential nomination, you can certainly count on me to support him. Even if McCain
made up his policies as he went along, he’d be so much better as president than Al Gore that I wouldn’t have any trouble working
up real enthusiasm for his cause, plastering my bumper with McCain stickers and putting a McCain button on my lapel. But I
expect McCain to lose, not win. Over the next few weeks, it’s my guess, Republicans will rally to George W. Bush, the compassionate
conservative, despite the insurgency of John McCain, the—well, the whatever it is that McCain is. And if I’m right, Bush will
have added a second paradox to this campaign. By standing on the issues, he will have proven his character.

Probably the best way to see the mayor of New York City in action is not to see him at all but to hear him. Rudolph Giuliani
hosts two live call-in radio shows every week. On a Friday morning in the spring of 1999, I sat in on one of the mayor’s broadcasts,
WABC’s
Live from City Hall
. The setting, the mayor’s office in city hall, is a high-ceilinged room with a chandelier, paned windows, tasteful sofas
and armchairs, and a thick carpet patterned with a geometric design. It conveys just the impression of sedate and historic
tastefulness that many law firms and investment banks spend a great deal of money to attain. I almost expected to see Alexander
Hamilton enter the room wearing a frock coat and a powdered wig. Instead Rudy Giuliani walked in in his shirtsleeves, his
thinning hair swept back over his forehead. He nodded quickly to the radio technicians in the room, then sat down at his desk,
beneath a portrait of his favorite mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, slipped on a pair of earphones, and tapped the microphone,
asking a technician, “You’re sure this thing is working, right?” Waiting for airtime, Giuliani glanced over papers on his
desk, making notes.

A technician announced that there was one minute to go. Glancing up, Giuliani noticed that I was trying to read the brass
plaque on the front of his desk. “The desk was La Guardia’s,” he said. “Ed Koch used to use it. Then David Dinkins sent it
off to Gracie Mansion [the official residence of New York’s mayors]. Can you believe that? I brought it back and had it raised.
La Guardia was barely over four feet tall. I kept banging my knees.”

The technician began the countdown. Three … two … one.

“Hello, everybody,” the mayor began. “This is Rudy Giuliani speaking to you from city hall.” He would get to callers in a
few moments, Giuliani explained, but first there were a few items he wanted to mention. In the course of the next three minutes
he discussed half a dozen topics, staring off into the room as he engaged in a staccato, stream-of-consciousness monologue.

First he was the city historian, explaining the construction taking place around city hall. “We’re restoring City Hall Park
to its nineteenth-century glory,” Giuliani said. When workers started turning up old objects, Giuliani had called in archaeologists.
They had identified everything from minor, everyday items such as old bottles and toothbrushes to sites of major interest,
including burial grounds. “The city has a history that goes back to 1625 when the Dutch first settled here. In the very early
days, the character of the city was set, and the character of the city remains the same today. It’s a business city. The area
of Wall Street was used for trading items way back as early as 1634 or 1635. Teachers, if you’re looking for a good field
trip for your class, we’ll have a big historical display here in city hall when the construction is completed.”

Next Giuliani became the city’s top basketball fan. “Talking about the present, tonight the Knicks take on the San Antonio
Spurs, and they’re down three games to one.” The mayor told his listeners not to worry. The Knicks would end the series by
winning the next three games. “It’s exactly where the Knicks
want
to be, with their backs against the wall. In an underdog team, it’s the only way in which they can really function.” (The
Knicks lost that night, ending the series.)

Next Giuliani became in effect the secretary of defense. Moving from a basketball team to the defense establishment of the
entire nation, he conveyed no awareness that he had jumped from a small topic to a big one. He simply kept talking.