Senators at a campaign finance reform news conference Thursday
"I have never been prouder to be in the United States Senate," McCain pronounced in an Oscar-style, I'd-like-to-thank speech before the vote. To use McCain's favorite analogy during his presidential run, Luke Skywalker has blown up the Death Star.
And now the empire is ready to strike back. McCain nemesis Mitch McConnell, who jokingly adopted the "Darth Vader" moniker for himself during debate last week, gave his own closing statements as the evening session opened, reiterating at great length all the ways that McCain and Feingold's cure was worse than the disease (if there was a disease at all). But his primary message is simple: He and McCain-Feingold will meet again.
"It's not over yet," he said Sunday. "It's over in the Senate, but this is a bill that's fraught with all kinds of constitutional problems, and if it becomes law, I'm taking it to court."
If it gets that far.
Sponsored by McCain-Feingold doppelgangers Chris Shays and Marty Meehan, a soft-money ban has cruised through the House before by wide margins, but as in the Senate, pro-reform votes get awfully skittish as soon as they're meaningful. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay has vowed to "try anything I can" to defeat the bill, and on this one he's got Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, who's upset about the hike in hard-money limits, in his corner.
Should a soft-money ban pass the House, there's the matter of reconciliation — taking McCain-Feingold and its House equivalent and molding them together into one unified bill. In other words, take the torturous negotiations and amendment-adornment that kept McCain-Feingold on the brink of death the last two weeks, double them for the House, and then multiply by four. Sunday, New York Democrat Charles Rangel told CNN he knew how it would come out: The measure would pass the House by a slim margin — and then die of a Republican "poison pill" when it goes to a conference committee. "It will never reach the President's desk," Rangel said.
If it does, Bush is unlikely to pose a problem. For now Bush doesn't feel he has any goodwill to waste by vetoing a bill that most Americans would prefer to see become law, and the last thing he needs is another p.r. rematch with the party-bridging McCain.
Besides, the courts have been kind to Bush when he's needed them, and the lawyers — led by a strange-bedfellow coalition of the ACLU, the conservative Southeast Legal Foundation, and whomever McConnell hires — are lining up to take a whack at the constitutionality of whatever Bush signs.
But first things first. "It's been through the House twice by overwhelming majority, so I think we can do it," said McCain, adding: "I do not underestimate that the closer we get to passage the greater the opposition will be."
The key — both on the House floor and in the dimly lit committee parleys — may be the star power of the man who's gotten McCain-Feingold this far.
Consider this: The day before it was to pass the Senate, Chuck Hagel — who saw his own rival bill go down to McCain's last week — casually noted on CNN that McCain didn't sit on the Rules Committee, which had jurisdiction over the bill, so he didn't have a legitimate claim to sit on any committee that resolves differences between the House and Senate versions. To which top Senate Democrat Tom Daschle, appearing on CBS, replied that he would appoint McCain to the necessary committee — in one of the Democratic slots — if the Republicans refused to do so.
Not that the wrangling ends there. If McCain makes it through the trial by committee, he still has to get the Senate to pass the re-reconciled bill all over again when it goes for its final, confirmatory vote. This telegenic series could go on awhile.