SAN DIEGOThe person with the best credentials by far for being The Other Guy doesn't see things that way. ''I don't see myself as the alternative,'' John McCain was saying the other day about a certain media phenomenon from Texas. ''If I did, and if my campaign was built that way, then he would be shaping me. Bad idea.
''I can't do anything about George Bush. But I can do a lot about me and my own campaign. I'm still convinced that when more typical voters start to pay attention to all this in the fall, they will want to take a look at each of us on our own terms. It would be a mistake, as well as not me, to just do a positioning act.''
When the Arizona senator hops aboard a bus for four days of serious immersion in New Hampshire this week, he may be going about this madness his own way, but there's no question that Bush has noticed him.
When the president-in-waiting descended upon South Carolina (another early-voting state next winter) last week, he found the Republican wise guys and the local press more than a little interested in the solid job McCain has done in planting his flag in the state via numerous appearances and the strong impression he has made. So Bush talked about him before ladeling out his usual mush. He praised the senator's record, claimed him as a pal and, lacking any more substantive thoughts, blurted out a vow to ''out-organize'' him.
Whatever else happens in the months ahead, organization will have little to do with it. Having something to offer the country as a person and a potential president will. As McCain likes to say, voters don't get two ballots (one for character, one for agenda).
If McCain were doing this the shallow way like Bush, he would travel the country as the Vietnam War hero and prisoner who endured unimaginable torture, and ride the image the way Bush rides his political media status. But he doesn't; he almost never brings it up. It's simply there, offering him instant respect and a hearing. So, also, is his extensive record as a very tough conservative and an independent cuss with a knack for making big things happen bipartisanly - the sort of stuff presidents do.
As we were finishing our chat, McCain's car pulled up to the local USO. I'm sure that from his bevy of bandwagon-riding issue advisers, Bush has been told that there are some 11,000 military families getting food stamps, and I'm equally sure he will be programmed to express suitable outrage at some point.
But McCain owns this issue. He can talk low pay, housing allowances, housing supply and location, recruiting policies, family stresses, and child care in real depth. He chats knowledgeably with a young Marine who delivers pizzas off duty to make ends meet.
But there's more to him than empathy. His ideas are comprehensive, going well beyond the pending pay increase, as are his thoughts on military readiness and new hardware. He insists that major new investments have to be made.
But then, the independent cuss emerges, because McCain has thought through the budgetary implications of his advocacy. And he is as devoted a foe of defense pork as he is of domestic program waste. McCain is positive the new investments in people and hardware can be financed entirely within the Pentagon budget. And he is the only Republican running with the credibility to attack the unneeded bases and politically inspired hardware boondoggles whose cancellation could provide the money.
And speaking of money, his well-known attack on the campaign finance status quo plays well in California, and has now taken on a particularly mischievous dimension that could have implications for next March's mega-primary. Even as he prepares for his annual battle in the Senate in October to rid the system of the unlimited chunks of cash called soft money, McCain has become part of a gathering storm here.
In Sacramento earlier in the week he jumped aboard an initiative campaign that offers California (where limits on sources and amounts of special-interest cash are virtually nonexistent) the same kind of cleaner system chosen in recent years by people in Maine and McCain's Arizona. Limits on contributions would be exchanged for access to free time on the air.
The initiative is the brainchild of a local conservative maverick, software zillionaire Ron Unz, who inspired last year's divisive campaign that tossed out the state's bilingual education system. It is caught up in all kinds of state politics, and includes extraneous, populist fodder cutting state legislator's pay and linking paychecks to timely enactment of state budgets.
But it would change the system, and its potential popularity is enhanced by widespread revulsion at new Governor Gray Davis's shameless fund-raising in his first months in office. And the fact is, if Unz gets the signatures for next March's ballot, a vote for the initiative would at least be a possible vote for McCain.
That's the kind of activity that has gotten Bush's attention. For that part of the divided Republican mind that would like a real contest for the nomination, the guy who is about to get on a bus in New Hampshire mocks his mush and as usual threatens conventional thinking.
Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.
