Richard Whalen

Senator John McCain proves the adage: “Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.” After losing a gutter brawl for the GOP nomination to George W. Bush in 2000, McCain nonetheless campaigned for Bush’s re-election in 2004. McCain thus loyally got in line for 2008.

Now, McCain has the nomination and Bush’s rather defensive White House Rose Garden endorsement and prediction: “He’ll be the (next) President.”

Being loyal and showing up is what GOP presidential politics has been about ever since Richard Nixon’s nomination and election in 1968. Early that year, newly elected Governor of California Ronald Reagan tried to jump the line but Senator Strom Thurmond, as the Party’s reigning elder, firmly told him: “It’s Dick's turn, Ron.”

McCain is currently seriously short of campaign money and needs President Bush as his chief fundraiser. In the short-term, his role as Bush’s “legacy” meets his needs. Before the successful surge” in U.S. troop strength in Iraq, he was a sharp, informed critic of the woefully under strength U.S. ground commitment, the result of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s failed “war on the cheap” gamble. Now McCain claims credit for the “surge” and is gung-ho for staying in Iraq as long as it takes – his “hundred years” remark will haunt him through November.

The Democrats’ party-splitting battle between Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama will continue until the Democrats’ August convention and will probably be decided by the 800 super delegates. This “war” is a blessing for McCain. He gets a few months of reduced media coverage in which to organize national staff, plan strategy, adopt a realistic budget and carefully “vet” his vice presidential choice – the most important campaign and self-revealing decision he needs to make. I don’t think McCain will make an imitative move by nominating a woman or a minority member.

McCain, after decades in the Capital, remains the feisty outsider untainted by Washington scandals and Bush’s appalling record of the past eight years. He must now emphasize that he carries the libertarian banner of Reagan’s authentic legacy as a limited government conservative and do nothing that might impair his all-important image of integrity and independence.