ohn McCain meets Willie Horton in South Carolina.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Even a crab apple.
So the systematic attempt by the Bush machine to shove McCain into the sheep-dip in South Carolina bears a distinct resemblance to the low-blow tactics deployed for Bush the Elder by the late Lee Atwater, the South Carolinian whose specialty was trashing his bosses' rivals.
Atwater, whose religious conversion late in life was accompanied by apparently sincere regrets over some of his brass-knuckle tendencies, was the man who rolled out the attack ads against Michael Dukakis in the '88 campaign. Ominous video fantasies of assorted black and Hispanic convicts coming through a prison's revolving door galvanized wavering voters into believing that Willie or some other dark-hued rapist-murderer would be slicing his wicked way through their screen doors the minute Dukakis became president.
Hey, it wasn't pretty, but it worked. Now it's George W. Bush who's the candidate, and instead of the lawyerly Dukakis, it's rough-and-ready John McCain who's being trashed by the Bush political operation. After getting shellacked in New Hampshire by 18 points, Bush Junior decided to go negative in South Carolina, assailing McCain as a fraudulent campaign finance reformer and some kind of slippery Washington lowlife.
With the GOP establishment gagging at the prospect of a reformer like McCain actually winning their nomination, the rubbishing of him went into overdrive. McCain blamed Bush's heavy-handed operatives for phone banks spreading lies about his record. Still, the mugging continues. With $31 million to toss at his lone remaining serious rival, Bush ignited a dirty ad war. Killing the messenger of campaign finance reform fits right in with the desperate attempt to resurrect the Bush candidacy for a lot of special interests.
The fear-spreaders in the gun lobby and the antiabortion business would lose their livelihood if McCain's proposed ban on soft money became law. So the gun boys, and the consultants and fund-raisers who live off the antiabortion movement are linking hands with Bush to throttle the McCain insurgency.
The clever lads telling Governor Bush what to do and say know from experience that negative campaigning depresses turnout, and lowers the proportion of crossover Democrats and independent s who might be attracted to McCain's Braveheart campaign. So the avalanche of mud continues to roll. McCain fights back, but he has a puny little shotgun against the arrayed howitzers of the Bush field artillery brigade.
It is worth reconstructing the change of heart undergone by Atwater, who died of a brain tumor after reflection on his reputation as a rough-and-ready roustabout for the likes of US Senator Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina Republican, and Bush the Elder, whose presidential campaign he managed.
''A reputation as a fierce and ugly campaigner has dogged me,'' Atwater said before he died. ''I didn't invent negative politics. I am one of its most ardent practitioners.'' He publicly regretted the tactics he employed for Bush against Dukakis, for having vowed to ''strip the bark off the little bastard,'' and ''make Willie Horton his running mate.''
Wrote Atwater in Life magazine: ''I am sorry for both statements, the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not.'' Replied Dukakis: '' He had the courage to apologize. That says a lot for the man. My heart goes out to his family.''
There will no doubt be apologies aplenty at the GOP convention this summer in Philadelphia, when the Bush and McCain forces are obliged to bury the hatchet, or at least pretend to. But the rough treatment in South Carolina and elsewhere resurrects the suspicion in this writer's mind that the Bush clan will use low blows when pushed against the ropes.
They tried to horse McCain off the ballot in New York. The low-turnout Delaware primary Bush just won was a joke; the GOP apparatus he controlled slashed the number of polling places from 260-plus to just 28, making a mockery of open-access rules. In state after state, they are pulling bag jobs against McCain, whose incendiary appeal to folks fed up with business-as-usual in DC ignited this prairie fire.
Last Wednesday, I became one of the thousands of Massachusetts voters to re-register to vote as an independent, or ''unenrolled,'' so as to be in position to cast a rare (but not unique) vote for a Republican presidential candidate. If you can't figure out which one I'm for, you're not paying attention.
The Bill Bradley challenge to Al Gore is sputtering out. The real action this season is in the GOP column. You don't have to agree with McCain on abortion (he's against it, except for rape, incest, and life of the mother), or Clinton (he's against him on most counts, except he supported the NATO war in Kosovo and bravely committed publicly to supporting any deployment of ground troops) to see in the Arizonan a rare combination of character and life experience.
You don't get many chances to vote for a John McCain at the presidential level. So you better take it while you can. If Bush Junior's Let's-Raze-McCain approach snuffs out the crusade of the man who vows to chase the money changers from the Washington temple, we're all worse off.
Footnote: In my Wednesday op-ed column explaining how Massachusetts residents can re-register from their political party to independent or ''unenrolled'' status by Feb. 16, I mentioned only Democrats and Republicans.
Christine Schoaff, executive director of the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts, properly points out that the Libertarians have achieved ''major party'' designation by the Secretary of State's office, and will conduct its own primary on election day, March 7. You Libertarians will have no less than six presidential candidates to peruse, as well as state and town committee candidates. Apologies for the omission.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
