Patronage or Bust!
John McCain’s new crusade.

June 4, 2001 3:15 p.m.

ohn McCain has been casting around for another crusade besides campaign-finance reform and he has apparently found it — employment. Not employment in the nation at large. That would require some knowledge of economics. Nothing so grubby would ever occupy the capacious and supple mind of the Arizona patriot. No, employment for his supporters. It seems — as we heard over and over this weekend — that a $250 contributor to McCain was eyed suspiciously by the Bushies when he applied for a job. Someone dust off the Straight Talk Express; call Wolf Blitzer; gin up anonymous attack phone calls (then lie about them); dredge up a Gary Bauer endorsement; and order a David Brooks essay — this must not stand!

Why any self-respecting McCainiac would want to work for a president who has humiliated the nation, who has sold out the GOP to corporate interests, and who has run a campaign in South Carolina worthy of Robert Mugabe, is a mystery. But a McCain crusade never has to make sense — it just has to be a crusade, something to stir the nation. Patronage for McCainiacs will serve as well as anything. And why not aim really high? Getting the now-infamous $250 contributor his job as deputy assistant secretary for something or other is not nearly enough. This journey of righteousness, this war for the nation's soul, won't end until Marshall Wittmann is back at the Heritage Foundation and John Weaver has a fat RNC contract!

Now, it may have been small-minded of the Bushies to give the $250 McCainiac a hard time — if that is actually what happened. But, of course, no one has been willing to remark the corresponding small-mindedness on the part of the McCainics. This is supposed to be one of the precipitating causes of the Arizona maverick's departure from the GOP? Comparisons are constantly being made between McCain and Theodore Roosevelt. There's something to it, especially when it comes to the TR of 1912, who allowed his egomania and pettiness to push him into an extremely destructive run against an incumbent Republican whom he resented with all his strength.

Poor John McCain. Egged on by angry sycophants and his own consuming grudges, he may yet live down to the worst, least worthy legacy of TR.