Potomac Watch

SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- Ask John McCain's campaign whom the presidential candidate consults for economic advice, and the first answer is, we'll get back to you. The second answer is Kevin Hassett, co-author of "Dow 36,000," a super-bullish stock-market tome.

But maybe the real answer is no one, since Mr. McCain recently fretted, during a GOP debate, that today's 11,000-point Dow is a stock-market "bubble."

Texas Gov. George W. Bush has platoons of economists who spent nine months assembling his tax cut. Sen. McCain has -- the top of his own head, which in a sense sums up the entire McCain candidacy. The medium is his message, and the medium is the man himself.

This explains both his recent surge and his vulnerability as he tries to steal the GOP nomination from Mr. Bush. His war record and blunt political style are perfect for a year when prosperity and Bill Clinton have made character count more than issues. Just as Democrats turned to Jimmy Carter as the purest anti-Nixon after Watergate, many Republicans view Mr. McCain as the ideal anti-Clinton.

Rightly offended by media adoration of Mr. McCain over campaign finance, some conservatives have missed this part of his grass-roots appeal. But the reality is as clear as Christmas in this key primary state, perhaps the most anti-Clinton in the country.

It's no accident the senator is introduced by Rep. Lindsey Graham, Carolina's most popular politician since his turn as a House impeachment manager. "John McCain's never going to wave his finger in your face and lie to you," Mr. Graham tells a crowd at Converse College here. "He knows what the definition of is is."

Mr. McCain is only slightly less subtle. "I will never take a poll" about sending Americans into battle, he says, a line that plays well in a state in which 38% of GOP voters are veterans or have one in their family. He's funny and self-deprecating with a crowd. And his fluency on foreign policy is obvious, and would match up well against Al Gore.

Even the senator's main domestic themes are less about the issues than about character and independence. His attack on pork-barrel projects sets him apart from a GOP Congress now spending like liberals. And campaign-finance is "a device to define the guy, to prove he's the anti-Clinton. It's the crusade that makes him a crusader," says his turbo-tongued adviser Mike Murphy.

My own survey of Mr. McCain's sizeable crowds suggests this is working. Asked about his appeal, not a single voter cited a single issue. But dozens said, "honesty" or "I want someone in the White House I can admire."

Poor Steve Forbes thought the issues would make him the anti-establishment candidate, the populist outsider to Mr. Bush. But the politics of biography has let Mr. McCain fill that role, despite his 17 years in Congress. No sitting senator has pulled this off since JFK in 1960.

Mr. McCain's challenge from now on, however, is to show his campaign is more than just another chapter in his autobiography. Especially because his domestic agenda has more holes than a Harold Ickes deposition.

This week he unveiled health-care ideas designed to neutralize that Democratic strength. But when asked twice why prescription drugs were cheaper in Canada than in the U.S., he thrashed around like a beached whale. "We've got to find out why that is," he actually said. Imagine how Bill Bradley would pounce on that one.

A Republican serious about winning would know that the reasons include litigation costs, as well as price controls that would cripple new therapies if the world's biggest drug market (America) imposed them. He'd also point out that free-market Medicare reform blocked by Mr. Clinton would provide such drug insurance.

For all of his supposed bluntness, Mr. McCain is also circumspect when tackling liberal pieties. He shrinks from a fight over tax cuts or art subsidies, much less guns or abortion. Mr. McCain points in defense to his undeniably conservative voting record. But a presidential campaign is about setting a mandate to govern in the future.

His theme that campaign-finance reform is the "gateway" through which all conservative reforms must pass is especially unpersuasive. Pork spending and tax loopholes existed long before "soft money." The reason tax reform and school choice haven't passed Congress is because of genuine political opposition. A president's job is to overcome that with arguments, not assume it will vanish with a single, miracle process-cure.

All the more so because if Republicans do take the White House in 2000 (and keep Congress) they'll have a rare reform opportunity. Yet so far Mr. McCain has proposed no tax cut worth the name and his education proposal -- a vague voucher experiment funded by corporate welfare cuts -- is more posture than plan.

The best news about the McCain threat to Mr. Bush is that it may improve both of them. Mr. McCain's character campaign will force Mr. Bush to get tougher and to run as a tax cutter. This Bush counterpunch will in turn force Mr. McCain to offend the New York Times by running on more than liberal campaign reform.

Republicans might even emerge with a nominee who can win.