A couple of months ago, Franklin Foer wrote a very compelling piece for The New Republic explaining that John McCain’s willingness to put aside his personal hatred for George W. Bush had everything to do with one last run for the Republican nomination in 2008. Foer was almost certainly right and McCain’s hints about the next presidential campaign are becoming less subtle.
Former Presidential candidate John McCain yesterday left the door open for another Presidential run in 2008.
“I’m not ruling it out, but I’m not ruling it in,” McCain told The Union Leader.
Noting that President Bush hadn’t yet celebrated his second inauguration, the Arizona senator said he will think about running in “maybe a couple of years.”
During a dinner celebrating the First Amendment, the winner of the 2000 Republican Presidential primary in New Hampshire delivered a unifying post-mortem on the 2004 Presidential election, contending the country is not nearly as divided as the red and blue states on the Election Night map might suggest.
By virtue of his very presence in New Hampshire, McCain was telegraphing his intentions. But his hints are a break with where he was up until fairly recently. In his 2002 memoir, McCain sounded like a man resigned to the fact that he’ll never be president.
“I am sixty-five years old as I finish this book and facing the question that comes to everyone blessed with long life. Has my time passed? Is it time to withdraw from public duty, retire to my home on Oak Creek, and pursue my private interests? My third term in the Senate will end in 2004, and I must soon decide whether I want another. I have had a bout with cancer, and the immortality that was the aspiration of my youth, like all the treasures of youth, has slipped away.
“I did not get to be president of the United States. And I doubt I shall have reason or opportunity to try again.”
That’s not exactly the message McCain was sharing in New Hampshire yesterday.
Part of me can’t help but wonder if the GOP would really consider nominating McCain in 2008. While I’m sure the party faithful appreciate his efforts on Bush’s behalf this year, he remains a controversial figure in Republican circles.
To be sure, none of his potential rivals in ’08 are as ruthless as Rove was in 2000 (you no doubt remember the smears — Vietnam made McCain insane, he has an illegitimate child from an interracial relationship, etc.), but McCain would be an easy target with Republican primary voters based exclusively on above-board information.
After all, it was McCain who voted against Bush’s tax cuts, considered running on John Kerry’s ticket, has openly criticized the administration’s handling of the war, co-sponsored a Patients Bill of Rights with John Edwards (which the right really hated) and championed campaign-finance reform (which the right considers heresy). It was also McCain, just a few months ago, who said, “I believe my party has gone astray…. I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy.”
No less than the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, argued over the summer that McCain really isn’t even a Republican anymore.
As the Republican nominee, McCain would probably win the presidency fairly easily. But GOP primary voters are the most conservative people in America and have little tolerance for impurity. I don’t see how McCain can win over their support with a series of hard-right candidates running at the same time.