Frenemies: The McCain-Bush Dance

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A Maverick in Full
The U.S. Senate was split down the middle between Democrats and Republicans when Bush took office in January 2001. The Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, knew that all he needed to take control of the chamber was the defection of one Republican. Daschle had three targets, all of whom were finding themselves increasingly alienated from and isolated within the G.O.P.: Jim Jeffords of Vermont, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and John McCain of Arizona.

Jeffords and Chafee were members of a dying breed — the liberal New England Republican. McCain, on the other hand, was a Western conservative from Arizona who had gone to Congress as a Reagan Republican. But after the searing experience of getting entangled in the Keating Five scandal in the 1980s, McCain had grown increasingly independent, pursuing campaign-finance reform and other causes that made his fellow Republicans doubt his ideological convictions.

But it was his bid for the White House in 2000 that broadened McCain's appeal — and opened his eyes to his own potential clout. He ran as the candidate of reform — the anti-Establishment maverick — and while he lost, in the process he became the most popular politician in America. "That campaign changed him," says John Weaver, who was McCain's chief political adviser for a decade, until last summer when he left in a staff shake-up. "He became a rock star. On the trail he discovered all these new issues. How could he go back to the Senate and not talk about the need for a patients' bill of rights or stand up and say Bush's tax cuts were unfair?"

During Bush's first eight months in office, virtually every high-profile position McCain took seemed designed to antagonize the new President. "John did what he thought was right," says a close McCain associate. "If it happened to be something that ticked off Bush, so much the better." The antipathy was mutual. According to several veterans of the Bush White House, there was an unofficial policy in effect to block people who had worked on McCain's campaign from getting any of the thousands of jobs the new Administration was doling out.

Daschle and other Democrats involved in the quiet efforts to woo McCain recall that he was willing to listen to their pitch that he quit the G.O.P. in the spring of 2001 and become an independent. Most McCain loyalists insist now that he never seriously considered it. But they do concede that Ted Kennedy discussed the idea with McCain on more than one occasion. Mark Salter, McCain's closest aide, joined the Senator on that first visit to Kennedy's office and waited outside. "Teddy was just talking to me about switching parties," McCain told Salter when it was over. "What'd you tell him?" Salter asked. "No," replied McCain. "But he wants to talk to me again."

In another sign of unhappiness with the Bush regime, McCain's political advisers were exploring whether he could run for President, and win, as a third-party candidate against Bush in 2004. The assumption was that McCain was too old to wait until 2008 (he'll turn 72 in August) and too toxic within the party to run as a Republican again. "Not only was 2008 seen as too late, but we couldn't get our heads around the idea that he would be acceptable [to the G.O.P.]," says one of those advisers. But running as an independent was deemed futile. "We looked at it, and it just wasn't feasible," the adviser says. "Third-party candidates don't win."

After Jeffords left the G.O.P., throwing the Senate to the Democrats, the White House grew briefly interested in McCain. Out of the blue, John and Cindy were invited to a private dinner in the residence with George and Laura. It lasted all of an hour. When Congress passed the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform bill in early 2002, the legislation and its chief sponsor were so popular that Bush chose to swallow hard and sign it. According to a former White House official who was involved in the discussion, the President rejected the idea of holding a public signing ceremony. "He didn't want to give McCain the satisfaction," says the former official. McCain was informed in a telephone call from a midlevel White House aide that the bill had finally become law.

Despite his public support for Bush after 9/11, McCain had deep misgivings about him as Commander in Chief. In March 2002, he and two other Senators were at the White House, briefing Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, about their recent meetings with European allies when Bush unexpectedly stuck his head in the door. "Are you all talking about Iraq?" the President asked, his voice tinged with schoolyard bravado. Before McCain and the others in the room could do more than nod, Bush waved his hand dismissively. "F___ Saddam," he said. "We're taking him out." And then he left.

McCain was appalled. He was a Republican, and a hawk, and exactly one year later he would enthusiastically support the decision to topple the Iraqi regime by force. But to McCain, his encounter with Bush that day was more evidence of the shallow intellect and dangerous self-regard possessed by the man to whom he had lost an acrimonious contest two years earlier. Later, McCain would retell the story and shake his head incredulously. "Can you believe this guy?" he asked. "He's the President!" He didn't say it, but the continuation of the thought hung in the air: Can you believe this guy is President — instead of me?