The Pilot vs. The Preacher

John McCain and Mike Huckabee have been exceedingly polite to each other. After Iowa, McCain praised Huckabee as a man who has "run a very good, smart, positive campaign," and he has repeatedly praised Huckabee's "decency" and "integrity." Huckabee gushed that McCain "is a hero in this country. He's a hero to me." They aim their scorn at Mitt Romney. The lesson of the Iowa caucuses, said McCain, was, "one, you can't buy an election in Iowa, and two, negative campaigns don't work"—a clear dig at Romney, who outspent Huckabee by about 20 to 1 and bought a slew of ads trashing his opponent. In his faux-innocent, aw-shucks way, Huckabee took the most wicked shot at Romney about a month ago, asking, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the Devil are brothers?" (He later apologized.)

Openly praising each other while slyly knifing a mutual foe can work for a while. Romney makes a useful foil. As depicted by McCain and Huckabee, the former governor of Massachusetts is the robo-candidate, the plastic pol who will say anything and spend as much as necessary to win. McCain and Huckabee, meanwhile, are the "authentic" ones, the anti-politicians who represent the change Americans crave, or seem to, judging from the turnout at the Iowa caucuses. But what if Romney goes down in New Hampshire and McCain and Huckabee roar into South Carolina on Jan. 19 as the two front runners? Will the mutual back-scratching end and the attack ads begin? Will McCain and Huckabee become the very thing they profess to abhor while savaging each other?

McCain and Huckabee face the maverick's dilemma. It is a fine strategy to run as an outsider, to lament Washington's sorry state, to pose as the face of change. But once victory and power seem possible, there is a temptation to pick up the old cudgels of politics—the negative ads, the slick consultants, the hired guns who believe that politics is war, and forever want to fight, fight, fight. The high road always looks like the way to go for reformers—but it has a way of dipping down into the bogs of politics as usual. Both McCain and Huckabee are refreshingly free-spirited and capable of rising above the dreariness and sordidness of the stump. But both are human, at times a little too cute, and susceptible to self-defeating behavior.

McCain knows about the risks of veering off onto the low road, or at least he should. In 2000 he started strong, riding his Straight Talk Express. While George W. Bush, the establishment favorite, seemed to be overhandled and prepackaged, McCain merrily bounced along in his bus with a large gaggle of reporters, saying whatever came into his mind and reaping endless free media. When he committed a verbal gaffe, the press by and large let him get away with it, because he seemed so spontaneous and honest. McCain was disarmingly frank about the political game, but essentially positive. He upset Bush in New Hampshire, winning by a comfortable 19 points.

Then came South Carolina. The Bush campaign fired volleys of negative ads, while an underground smear campaign accused McCain of, among other things, fathering a black child out of wedlock. (Bush was never directly linked to the slime job, but it was widely assumed that McCain's assassins were operatives from the old Lee Atwater machine, employed by two generations of Bushes to spread dirt in South Carolina and elsewhere as required.) Confronted with mudslinging mean enough to make his wife cry, McCain made the mistake of listening to his own handlers while they devised ways to get even. His chief strategist at the time was Mike Murphy, a clever, profane consultant who once had a gag license plate stamped GO NEG and whose avowed "cardinal rule" as a political consultant was "Don't Fall in Love With the Meat" (meaning the candidate, though Murphy did fall for McCain). As recounted in a Washington Post story by Howard Kurtz in March 2000, Murphy retreated to a hotel room two weeks before the South Carolina primary "to do what he did best: fight fire with fire. He was determined to write a tough negative ad to blunt Bush's aerial assault on McCain. He had been through the exercise hundreds of times; you had to punch back. They couldn't let Bush smear McCain. The attacker had to pay a price."

Murphy's ad accused Bush of "twisting the truth like Clinton." McCain was uncomfortable with the ad, but went along. He is no stranger to wrestling with the forces of darkness and light, and has (at least) two sides. He is capable of the kind of profound forgiveness sometimes shown by people who have truly suffered, as he did at the hands of the North Vietnamese during his five and a half years of captivity. But he also has a reputation as a hothead. Though his advisers in 2000 did caution him against losing his temper, McCain became angry around the time of the South Carolina primary. He visibly seethed at Bush in a debate and lashed out in a speech at evangelical leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance." McCain was egged on by Murphy, who called the "agents of intolerance" speech a "home run." Murphy also secretly launched a phone campaign strongly implying that Bush was a religious bigot—and got caught at it by the press. McCain's once lofty campaign seemed to sink into the mire of business-as-usual politics. Bush was able to recover from his loss in New Hampshire and go on to win the nomination.