How Mccain Does It

John McCain's feisty 88-year-old mother, Roberta, stood at the bar last week at a fashionable Washington book-signing party and, between bites of an hors d'oeuvre, declared that her son's presidential campaign is a "miracle." She said she had never seen any signs of political ambition in the boy as he grew up. "John has no side," she went on, using an old upper-class expression for lack of pretense. "He doesn't need money or to be famous or powerful." His actions were sometimes unpredictable, she went on, but they were always "honorable."

Many voters share Mother McCain's view. They see the former naval hero as a refreshing exception to the poll-driven posturing of politics. But because McCain has a code of honor and can be wittily self- effacing does not mean that he is guileless. Like most great charmers in public life, his offhand manner is studied. Just as Winston Churchill was said to have rehearsed his extemporaneous remarks, McCain's gift is to appear spontaneous while repeating the same lines over and over. McCain's campaign has an improvised feel, as if McCain is out there on his own, winging it on the Straight Talk Express. Actually, his campaign strategy evolved slowly, built on the senator's instinct and experience, but also on the advice of hired guns who have served in many other presidential campaigns. His closest advisers are some of the shrewdest old hands in Washington. They see his insurgency less as a moral crusade than as a brilliant piece of political theater. It is not an accident that McCain's most frequently invoked heroes, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, were two of the greatest actors in American politics.

About two years ago McCain began talking to Ken Duberstein, Reagan's last White House chief of staff and a close friend of Gen. Colin Powell's. McCain wanted to know: was Powell thinking of running? Left unstated was the reality that there wasn't room for two American heroes in the presidential race. Duberstein assured McCain that Powell would stay out of the campaign, and the two men began talking about "upping McCain's profile," says Duberstein. McCain, who had a book coming out about his own military career, had watched with fascination as Powell ran a book tour in 1995 that resembled a coronation parade. "How did Colin do it?" McCain wanted to know. The senator also quizzed Duberstein about President Reagan. How had the Gipper won over so many Democrats as well as Republicans? Duberstein offered contacts (his corporate clients include Goldman Sachs and General Motors) as well as sage advice. He began to quietly expose McCain to corporate bigwigs (and potential campaign donors), hosting a breakfast for 25 business leaders with Henry Kissinger in New York that December.

McCain was not free to take a flier on the presidency. Before announcing his candidacy, the twice-married senator had to win over his own "incredibly reluctant" wife, McCain recalled to NEWSWEEK. On a trip to the Maldive Islands after the '98 elections, he managed to persuade Cindy McCain. "I told her that when I'm about to retire, that I don't want to look back and say, 'I really wish I had tried it'." Still, she wanted to hear from the professionals. At a meeting at McCain's office in December, Cindy looked at his assembled advisers and demanded, "You look me in the eye and tell me this is real--John has a chance."

The brain trust that day was a who's who of veteran political players. It included Greg Stevens, who had produced the ads for Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign; John Weaver, who had run Sen. Phil Gramm's well-financed but unsuccessful 1996 bid; Gramm's veteran pollster, Bill McInturff; Vin Weber, a former congressman who lobbies McCain's committee for big corporations like AT&T, and Duberstein. McInturff was able to tell Cindy that her husband's name recognition was in the single digits, but when voters were asked about a candidate with a life story that resembled McCain's--a former POW who spent five years in the Hanoi Hilton--the numbers shot up. The bad news was that McCain's main cause--campaign-finance reform--did not inspire voters. Too much of a "process" issue, said the pros.

McCain understood that his real appeal had to be his personal story. In May 1999, he won a Profiles in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Library for pushing campaign-finance reform. While he was at the library, McCain spent long hours watching films of the young JFK, as a young hero in a naval uniform and as president, deftly handling reporters at press conferences. The senator also befriended JFK Jr., who was one of the prize judges. In his last editorial in George magazine before he died last summer, JFK Jr. compared McCain to the hero of "Star Wars." McCain's aides say it's a coincidence, but these days McCain likens himself to Luke Skywalker trying to fight free of the Death Star (a.k.a. the web of special interests on Capitol Hill).