LOS ANGELESCan John McCain, riding along on his high wire, be inspiringly right and disastrously wrong at the same time?
His allies in California, trying to help him clear the highest hurdle the McCain campaign has faced to date, think so.
They reacted with horror upon discovering that McCain would not show up for the only debate planned prior to the state's primary on March 7, which he has said will be won by the eventual Republican nominee. Also, they expressed varying degrees of confidence that by the time you read these words McCain will have understood his goof and rearranged his schedule in New York to accommodate the joint appearance Thursday evening with Alan Keyes and George W. Bush.
But all this was before the California dreamers found out that McCain was also in the process of escalating his battle with Bush over the hate-mongering of Bob Jones and his university and the extremism of Pat Robertson and his Christian Coalition. Instead of more sniping over Bush's inability to appreciate the significance of his campaign appearance earlier this month at the bastion of bigotry in South Carolina, McCain has tried to launch a debate about the strangling alliance that lies behind that symbol - his party's Faustian bargain with the religious right, specifically Robertson and Jerry Falwell.
But the key word is ''debate.''
What McCain did Monday morning in Robertson's own lair of Virginia Beach on the eve of gateway primaries in that state and in Washington is already provoking both a counter-reaction from the threatened right and an outpouring of support for McCain's boldness in confronting the guts of his party's dilemma.
McCain's momentum is on the line in the gateway states (plus North Dakota) today. But his survival is on the line next week in the country's first essentially national primary. Having raised the issue of the Robertson wing's hold on the party in such a confrontational way while stepping away from the debate borders on the irrational.
The decision is even more irrational in the face of the major effort the senator is making here. He is in the middle of a roughly $3 million TV advertising campaign that for the first time is competitive with Bush's. And his campaigning time in California reflects a heavier commitment. To do that but skip the CNN-Los Angeles Times debate (and a possible Times endorsement) makes no sense.
His major supporters, from Mayor Susan Golding in San Diego to Secretary of State Bill Jones in Sacramento, do not appreciate being left holding the bag. Nor do they like having to deny the Bush line that McCain is bailing out because he trails by 10 to 20 points in California polls.
But the public will be the biggest loser if McCain doesn't change his mind.
Make no mistake, there was a political element to McCain's speech yesterday. He was determined that Bush's remarkable letter of apology to New York's Cardinal John O'Connor about his silence at Bob Jones University not be the end of an issue that has powered his campaign since South Carolina. But it's also true that McCain had largely written his speech before Bush acknowledged that he regretted not challenging bigotry at the university.
And McCain's speech was right on target. People will argue about his equation of Robertson and Jerry Falwell with ''union bosses'' in Democratic politics and with Minister Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton in religion-based politics, but he was careful to separate the Republican reverends from conservative Christians who shun the secular broker's role. And he was correct in his condemnation of those who have hijacked ''good causes'' and turned them into big business.
His description of post-New Hampshire George Bush as ''a Pat Robertson Republican who will lose to Al Gore'' was rough but fair comment; and his applause line that ''this is the party of Abraham Lincoln not Bob Jones'' is a winner.
Who knows what this outburst will trigger, but in no state is it more important than this one, where the Republican Party is caught in a vise between its dominant right wing and more moderate voices struggling to bring change.
How ironic it would be if McCain blows his last chance here in large part because he wasn't willing to reschedule some rally back in New York.
Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.
