Campaign 2000: Primary Questions

Oliver Wendell Holmes once famously described Franklin Roosevelt as a man possessed of a second-rate intellect but a first-rate temperament. In the years since, America has elected brilliant men and charming ones, wonks, rogues, rascals, a general, an actor, a nuclear engineer, in a rolling judgment about knowledge and wisdom, instinct and style. At times it seems that the murkier the issues, the sharper the matter of character becomes.

This year's Democratic race was a two-man show from the start, but on the Republican side, it took more time, five dropouts, some stumbles and some surprises to arrive where we are now, at least in New Hampshire: with 12 weeks left to go until primary day, George W. Bush and John McCain are suddenly just single digits apart. And as it happened, at just the moment that the contest came into focus, the issues of intellect and temperament that have hummed all year suddenly threw off sparks and lit up the whole horizon of the Republican race. One Navy prince, one political prince, both rebel cutups with frat-house charm, they took very different roads to the stage they currently share. If Bush is defined by his friends and alliances, McCain is known by the enemies he has dared to make and the grievances he has dared to have. Whereas Bush spent his early years at play, with a father who made everything easier, McCain spent his at war, with a father who ordered the bombing of the city where his son was held prisoner. Bush talks of compassion and those prosperity leaves behind; McCain of courage and the forces of evil at work in the "City of Satan." Bush, all lightness of being, struggles to be viewed as serious enough for the job; McCain, all coiled conviction, is so intense he has to struggle to be seen as normal. Both want to make over the Republican Party: one says he wants to give it a heart; the other says he wants to give it a conscience. Put them together, and it's easy to think you're looking at the ticket right now.

But whose name would come first? In staking his claim to leadership, McCain has never had a problem of lack of intellect or discipline--despite graduating fifth from the bottom of his Annapolis class with a bushel of demerits--but rather of temper and temperament. The question exploded last week in newspaper stories, most notably a blazing Sunday editorial in his hometown paper, the Arizona Republic, damning McCain as a bully, sarcastic and insulting. His personal story, in this view, becomes his burden, with the suggestion that the fighting spirit that allowed him to resist his North Vietnamese captors has left him muscle-bound, not quite nimble enough to cajole and convince and compromise in complicated times.

McCain's natural response was to frame his fault as a virtue: "I have always had this acute sense of right and wrong," he told TIME. And people like a fighter. "Show me a politician who's never offended anyone," said his spokesman Dan Schnur, "and I'll show you a politician who has never got anything done." At a time when the Republican leaders in Congress are not winning popularity contests, McCain's allies note, having them as enemies may win you friends.