The Pilot vs. The Preacher

Last week, asked by NEWSWEEK and other reporters about going negative in the 2000 South Carolina primary, McCain simply denied it. "No, never did," he said. Pressed by reporters—who asked, "Are you going to try to stay above the fray completely going forward?"—McCain seemed uncharacteristically evasive and finally answered, "We'll respond selectively." (Murphy is not working for McCain this time around, and could not be reached for comment.) McCain seems to blame his defeat in South Carolina more on pandering than on going negative. During a pre-primary debate with Bush in February 2000, McCain tried to finesse his position over whether the Confederate flag should be permitted to fly over the South Carolina capitol. In his memoir, McCain describes himself as "dishonest" and a "coward" for fudging on the issue of Old Dixie and writes, "I paid a penalty for that—and I should have."

A year ago, friends of McCain wondered if he wasn't pandering again in pursuit of the presidency. He seemed to almost fawn over President Bush (who still controls a huge fund-raising apparatus) and tried to make peace with the religious right, traveling to Falwell's Liberty University. At times he appeared subdued, worn—and old (he is 71)—as he tried to ingratiate himself with the Republican establishment. His campaign was badly run, squandering money. His longtime top adviser John Weaver quit, and some political experts pronounced his campaign to be essentially dead. Last summer McCain acknowledged to NEWSWEEK that he was "never quite comfortable being the front runner, per se." He went back to his more natural role as an underdog.

Over the past year, McCain's stump speech never really changed—the same impish, self-deprecating jokes ("As a former drunken sailor, I resent being compared to members of Congress"), the same victory-or-else stand on Iraq. Hard-core conservatives remained wary of him as soft on immigration and social issues, and too friendly to liberals. But as the surge worked to depress violence in Iraq, McCain's unyielding hawkishness seemed less quixotic. Last week Chuck Douglas, a former Republican congressman and McCain's vice chair in New Hampshire, recounted to NEWSWEEK how, in November 2006, he and other top advisers had warned McCain that "Iraq was the third rail and we did not think he should be walking on it." McCain had listened, nodded and rejected their advice. He made a comment that later became a campaign talking point: "I'd rather lose a campaign than lose a war." Unyielding support for the war in Iraq may yet prove to be an electoral albatross, but for the moment it is being seen as proof of McCain's integrity.

McCain, who essentially ignored the caucuses in Iowa, had further good fortune in the rise of Mike Huckabee. The former Baptist preacher was the perfect candidate for a flanking attack on McCain's most serious rival in New Hampshire, Governor Romney. Intent on winning both Iowa and New Hampshire, Romney was sucked into a wasting war against Huckabee in Iowa. While Romney poured about $7 million into ads and organized an elaborate turn-out-the-vote network, Huckabee was able to cruise about rural Iowa with his wife and his press secretary and depend on a builtin network of evangelical preachers, home-schoolers and flat-taxers. (Huckabee's campaign did not even have a staff photographer to capture the moment he learned he had won in Iowa—his wife, Janet, passed her tiny Canon digital camera to an aide who snapped the "official" photo.) On the trail and in the studio, Huckabee seemed loose and funny, not sanctimonious. He had none of the saccharine qualities sometimes associated with big-time evangelists. He was a genius at getting free media, leaving Iowa the night before the caucuses to fly to L.A. to appear with Jay Leno. He charmed the audience, playing the bass guitar with the band, and got off a zinger aimed right at Romney: "People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with than the guy that laid them off."

Huckabee struck a populist chord that seemed much more up-to-date than the old-time religion preached by Democrat John Edwards, who sounds like a figure out of the Great Depression or even earlier—William Jennings Bryan, railing against the money-changers in the election of 1896. But Huckabee's inexperience on foreign policy may catch up with him—he became confused about Pakistan's borders and was clueless when asked about a National Intelligence Estimate that Iran had given up building a nuclear weapon. More dangerous politically, perhaps, is the risk that Huckabee will start listening to professional campaign consultants.

Last month, as his campaign started to take off, Huckabee hired an old hand in the political game, Ed Rollins, as a top adviser. As writer Peggy Noonan pointed out, Rollins tried to impress young reporters by announcing that he was "the grizzled veteran," the "old battler" who would like to sink to his knees and "shoot Romney in the groin" and "punch his teeth out." Rollins in fact made a negative ad to run against Romney on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, but Huckabee says he had an "attack of conscience" and decided at the last minute not to run it.