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But there's less reform than meets the eye. As McCain's campaign-finance-reform bill stalled in Congress last year, he stripped the bill of key provisions--the bans on foreign money and phony "issues" ads--in an attempt to win votes. Some of his colleagues wondered if he was more interested in holding a victory press conference than passing meaningful reform.
Bush went after McCain's reform credentials last week, pointing out that as Commerce chairman, McCain has been willing to milk the system he rails against. "The portrait McCain likes is the one of the plain-talking crusader who's bucking the system," writes Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity in his book The Buying of the President 2000. "The one many others see is that of a politician who rarely breaks ranks with the special interests that finance his campaign." Many of McCain's top fund raisers and advisers--Kenneth Duberstein, Vin Weber--are lobbyists who do business with his committee. And as the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, McCain is more apt to rail against corporate malfeasance than to sponsor legislation to rein it in. It's the reverse of Teddy Roosevelt's dictum--McCain speaks loudly and carries no stick. He hammered airlines for providing lousy service, then tabled his passengers'-rights bill when they promised to do better. He bashed cable-TV operators for raising rates, but didn't write a bill forcing them to open their networks to competition. (Telecommunications giants such as AT&T and Time Warner, which owns TIME, have been among his big contributors.) "If we can get people to act in a meaningful, progressive fashion," he says on the stump, "we don't need legislation."
McCain's record makes the Bush strategy of calling him a Clinton clone seem foolish. In the Senate, McCain has been a rock-solid vote on just about every core G.O.P. issue, winning high ratings from the Christian Coalition and other conservative groups. He supported every item in Newt Gingrich's Contract with America and voted to convict Bill Clinton on every article of impeachment. And his environmental record would make Teddy Roosevelt cringe. McCain has voted many times to cut funding for toxic-waste cleanups, he has supported subsidies for mining on public lands, and he favors reopening national forest lands to logging. (In 1998 the League of Conservation Voters gave him a zero rating.) He is a longtime friend of the National Rifle Association's, voting against the Brady Bill in 1993 and the assault-weapons ban in 1994. He's against the licensing and registration of handguns. He has repeatedly voted against minimum-wage increases and equal pay for women, and labor considers him a reliable anti-union vote.
Bush allies in South Carolina have been running TV spots questioning McCain's commitment to the pro-life cause. Yet he took the pro-life position 82 times out of 86 votes cast in the Senate. The only area in which he has arguably strayed is one that has bedeviled many a pro-life advocate: fetal-tissue research. In 1992 the Senate considered a bill to overturn a moratorium on medical research using fetal tissue from elective abortions, and McCain--along with many other pro-life Senators--voted to lift the ban. He had been moved to do so by watching his friend Morris Udall, Arizona's Democratic Congressman, lose his battle against Parkinson's disease; fetal-tissue research held out hope for a cure.