SIMI VALLEY, Calif.
The big secret to John McCain is that he's 10 times the conservative that President-in-waiting George W. Bush is.
The intellectually lazy governor from Texas is trapped by traditional Republican money politics into playing the game between the 40-yard lines. John McCain, both because he's thought the big issues through and because he is truly independent, can actually move the ball where it counts.
You can see how McCain could reform education and make the conservative dream of vouchers finally have a chance to prove itself. There is no question that McCain's is the only route to a beefed-up military. And tax cuts that matter to people could actually happen on his watch.
The difference is not simply Bush politics versus McCain principle, though that is involved; the difference is also McCain's willingness to fight for the conservative issues and values to which Bush gives such soporific lip service. And that difference flows as naturally from McCain's character as it doesn't from Bush's. It also flows naturally from his stance against moneyed special interests that have nothing to do with conservative goals.
At its core, McCain's potential to be an effective president doesn't come from his advocacy of ''soft money'' abolition as a ''liberal'' idea; it comes from his advocacy of clean politics as a liberating force for conservatives.
Take education. It is no accident that Bush has gotten no praise and much derision for his wishy-washy ideas on the public schools. After three years of warnings from Washington to nonperforming schools, the governor suggests a $1,500 voucher as a last resort.
''Big deal'' has been the response. From the right's perspective, there's too much Washington, and the voucher is too small to be useful; from the middle, the money is coming out of the public schools' hide and thus makes harder the very reforms it is supposed to stimulate.
Enter McCain. He wants real reform: a three-year national test of a voucher system that would have real value and thus offer real choice. Behind it would be real money: $5.4 billion through the states based on public school population but targeted at the neediest students in the worst schools.
Real money, however, requires real reform. Instead of taking it out of aid to public schools, McCain's idea would end an equivalent amount of tax and direct subsidies that the government here gives each year to producers of sugar, oil, natural gas, and ethanol. What's conservative about those government handouts? Nothing, in McCain's view; parochial and money politics sustain them, period.
Now take tax cuts. Bush supports virtually everything on the GOP congressional wish list, symbolized by that $792 billion monstrosity President Clinton just vetoed, half of which was polluted by special interest business goodies.
McCain made the mistake of voting for it in the Senate, but only out of party loyalty and the view that it wasn't going to become law. In fact, he favors none of the business loopholes, none of which has anything to do with conservative tax policy; all of which have everything to do with campaign contributions.
McCain has proposed expanding the reach of the lowest (15 percent) income tax bracket, as well as capital gains and other tax cuts aimed at people as opposed to special interests. He also fits tax cuts into a responsible budget policy (in direct contrast to Bush); President McCain would earmark 72 percent of the projected, non-Social Security surplus to shoring up Social Security and Medicare, 5 percent to debt reduction and thus fully 23 percent to tax cuts. He's not only a tougher conservative than Bush, he's also politically smarter.
And now take the military. In South Carolina, Bush did the typical Republican wish list - from higher pay to every weapons system dreamed of by every defense contractor to no change in the country's bloated base structure.
Again, McCain is a smarter, tougher conservative, who starts out with twice the credibility. McCain's reforms - higher pay, greater readiness, missile defense, and greater sea-lift capacity - would come at the expense of fat (pork barrel weapons systems and duplicative, unnecessary bases).
When the McCain announcement tour reached the Ronald Reagan Library here last week, Nancy Reagan was in the front row - no accident, I'm told. But McCain's thrilling life story, his independence, his civility, and his principled stand against Pat Buchanan are but the surface attraction.
If conservatives ever pay more serious attention to him, they will realize that McCain can lead them to results Bush's please-everybody bromides can never deliver. He has made ''reform'' a conservative word.
Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.
