hey're trying to shoot down John McCain again. Only this time the ack-ack is coming from the people on his own side, not the North Vietnamese.
''Friendly fire'' was what they called it in the Vietnam War when your own guys inadvertently aimed at you. But when they were deliberately trying to blast you, it was called ''fragging.'' The outspoken conservative from Arizona is now being fragged by his own home state governor and his hometown newspaper, The Arizona Republic. And the suspicion grows that the triggerman is the suddenly rattled campaign of Governor George W. Bush of Texas.
It's McCain who is surging in New Hampshire, largely because he carries the fight against corrupt money in politics. Bush is the biggest beneficiary of the lolly lavished on front-runners. McCain is emerging as this cycle's Message Man, the guy to vote for if you want to send a message about the stinkhole that is national politics today thanks to the soft-money avalanche and the soft corruption it engenders.
Bush Jr.'s hermetically sealed Bubble Boy campaign is conducted on tame television and in friendly interviews, where Junior's tender ears do not have to entertain tough questions or challenging cross-examination. Despite a price-is-no-object campaign, his lead is threatened by McCain's surge. The stately procession of Bush Jr. to his coronation has been jarred by the undeniable attraction of New Hampshire voters to a maverick Republican who has the reputation of taking on the tough ones.
The Bush bandwagon has a slow leak in the right front tire. Bush's lead is down to a dozen points, which may explain the eruption of negative stories about McCain.
McCain's handlers see the fine hand of the Bush string-pullers behind a concerted effort to attack McCain's rear, in Arizona, while depending on Bush's bloated TV advertising budget to contain McCain at the front, in New Hampshire.
First, Arizona's Governor Jane Hull comes out for Bush and knocks McCain as a tantrum-prone tough guy. Then the governor's son is appointed - surprise, surprise - to be the front man for the Bush campaign in Arizona. These are plum jobs because if your guy wins, you become the conduit for all the goodies, the presidential appointments, leases, contracts, and favors that make the White House so worth winning if you make a living out of politics or politicians.
Then comes The Arizona Republic, with a knife-job editorial raising doubts about McCain's supposedly fearsome temper. Jarrin' John, complains the paper, can be ''volcanic ... sarcastic and condescending.'' The newspaper's chief executive appeared Tuesday night on CNN's ''Crossfire,'' where cohost Bob Novak skillfully elicited a number of facts the paper left out of its editorial.
A former political writer for the paper says McCain gets hammered because he wouldn't ''kowtow'' or kiss the ring of the paper's proprietor. Novak cited a vicious political cartoon attacking McCain's wife, Cindy, who had an addiction to painkilling drugs openly acknowledged by the McCain family for some time.
The cartoon portrayed a vengeful Mrs. McCain shaking medicine away from a cringing black child, said Novak, and it so angered the senator he refused to talk to the newspaper's reporters and executives for a full year. I haven't seen the cartoon yet. Novak said the Republic refused to give CNN permission to show it. If the newspaper is afraid to allow it to be shown on national television, draw your own conclusions as to fairness. The Republic threatens to rival the reigning title holder in low blows, The Manchester Union Leader.
The newspaper denies it is knowingly coordinating its attacks on McCain with the governor's office or the Bush campaign, now more or less one and the same, apparently, in Arizona. But there does seem to be a whiff of collusion wafting out of the southwest toward New Hampshire's mountainy airflow.
Bush has muscle on the ground in New Hampshire. The supposedly brawny political organization of Senator Judd Gregg, son of former Governor Hugh Gregg, is pushing Bush. But Bushes have been a tough sell there. George Sr. got creamed here in '80, barely survived the '88 primary, got nicked badly in the '92 primary, and lost New Hampshire to Clinton-Gore that year.
We've seen big-time corporate lobbyists who shower money on senators attack McCain. Then senators of his own party denouncing him on the Senate floor for calling attention to the corruption he alleges is indivisible from soft money flows. Bush, who has been endorsed by so many governors and congressmen he can't name them all, says you should judge a pol by the endorsements he gets. I say you can tell more about a would-be president by looking at his enemies. And the way John McCain is scaring his enemies makes people like me think all the more of him. If New Hampshire wants to send a message about soft money corruption Feb. 1, the messenger is named McCain.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
