A One-Man Earthquake

• Share

(3 of 4)

Rove and others insist there will be no change of plan. Some Republicans were even claiming that this was no big deal, that they could still pick off the Democrats they needed and would now have someone to blame when they couldn't. But plans are already in place to soften Bush's image on energy and the environment, largely through the sort of public events that worked so well at marketing him during the campaign. White House strategists are also planning some symbolic overtures to G.O.P. moderates in the coming weeks to tamp down any rebellion Jeffords might have inspired.

Both parties are on high alert for other defectors. If Jeffords bolted over slights like not being invited to a Rose Garden ceremony for the Vermont educator named Teacher of the Year, thoughtfulness was the rule by week's end. Republican leader Trent Lott, reeling from the loss of his majority leader post, was on the phone daily to chart the biorhythms of Rhode Island moderate Republican Lincoln Chafee, and probably would have delivered breakfast to his office had he asked. Chafee's long-standing request for a meeting with Bush was answered with a phone message from congressional liaison Nick Calio: "Do you have any problem with sooner rather than later?" Worried that Georgia Democrat Zell Miller might go Republican, Democratic whip Harry Reid personally walked Miller to one of the Democratic caucus meetings that Miller has been ducking of late, making sure Miller knows he has been missed. And an Armed Services Committee hearing last week looked more like a group-therapy session, with Kansas Republican Pat Roberts hugging his Maine colleague Susan Collins and telling her he loved her, only to be hip-checked by Democrat Joe Lieberman, who wanted to give her a hug himself.

One Republican who has been in quiet talks with the Democrats about the possibility of becoming an independent, sources tell TIME, is Bush's onetime presidential rival John McCain. A Democratic source says the Arizona Senator initiated surreptitious contact about six weeks ago; a Republican one says Kennedy and North Carolina Democrat John Edwards raised the idea in a meeting they arranged with McCain in Kennedy's hideaway office. More talks ensued--including sessions with Daschle and Reid--but McCain, if he ever seriously entertained the idea of switching, may find it more to his advantage to stay put. Though the White House has done its best to keep him out of the action, he is now perfectly positioned to be the dealmaker it needs in a Democratic-controlled Senate.

While McCain seems poised to become a de facto Republican leader, the future of the titular one is uncertain. It was Trent Lott's intelligence failure, some noted, that let Jeffords slip away. No one was stepping forward to challenge Lott for the top job--not yet, at least--but there was much G.O.P. grousing about the need for more aggressive leadership. Of the names being mentioned as possible replacements, most were Senators inclined to steer the caucus toward a harder line against the Democrats, not a more conciliatory one.

It's no surprise that sources close to Lott blame the White House for losing the Senate. "They should have been coddling Jeffords, not punishing him," one says. "By any undergraduate political-science calculation, the G.O.P. needed Jim Jeffords more than Jim Jeffords needed the G.O.P."