Amid campaign rhetoric, McCain takes a sober tone
Strident in 2000, candidate tries to avoid conflict
BEDFORD, N.H. - When word reached the McCain campaign on Wednesday afternoon that illegal immigrants had continued to work on Mitt Romney's lawn, staff members broke out into gleeful grins and the candidate himself proved unable to restrain a giggle as he exuberantly mimed the act of mowing grass.
Yet when McCain sat down minutes later in a campaign vehicle to discuss the subject further with reporters, his smile disappeared and his tone turned solemn as he talked about how the rough conversation over immigration "saddened" him.
"Let's recognize they are human beings," McCain said. "The Founding Fathers said all people are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights."
It was a sentiment McCain had expressed at a Republican debate last week when Rudy Giuliani had mocked Romney's "sanctuary mansion," and a theme that has come to define the closing pre-primary weeks of his campaign. As his rivals engage in lively and sharp exchanges, McCain is largely stepping away from the conflict.
"We'd just as soon not be in that tit-for-tat petty politics coverage," said McCain strategist Charlie Black. "A lot of people said to me that he was the adult in the room, which was a way of saying he was statesmanlike and rising above pettiness."
It is a new posture for McCain. Eight years ago, McCain ran on reform issues for which he had manufactured not only a cause, but a tone. This year, McCain has been handed a set of concerns revolving around war and peace that he says demand a "more sober conversation" with voters than he faced last time.
The rousing, militant candidate of 2000 has given way to a frequently affectless noncombatant. His campaign carries a muted aesthetic - a logo with a simple, martial rendering of his last name, direct-mail pieces (typically designed to be eye-catching in a stack of junk mail) in a cold monochrome - and McCain often has the grave tone to match.
The contrast is most apparent in debates. As he prepared for two this week - last night in Miami, and Wednesday in Des Moines - McCain noted the calming effect of a new debating metabolism.
He has begun scheduling town-hall meetings in the afternoons prior to debates, to loosen up, and has stopped guzzling coffee immediately beforehand, to settle his nerves. Aides say the quiet, steady approach serves him particularly well given the excitable style of his opponents.
"For 10 minutes, Rudy and Romney were in a food fight," said aide Mark Salter. "Everybody with a lick of political sense knows that's not helping anyone. Why get into it?"
In a five-way race, McCain seems happy to often be the one staying out. When approached in recent weeks to respond to various campaign controversies engulfing his rivals - such Giuliani's problems with Bernie Kerik, Romney's speech about his Mormonism - McCain has traipsed gingerly, offering reporters little to escalate hostilities.
Earlier in the campaign, when he did go after opponents, he did so in a way so circumspect that few noticed. In June, McCain gave a speech on immigration in Miami, pointing a finger at candidates who "want the office so badly that you would intentionally make our country's problems worse." Although staff members made clear that McCain was referring to Romney, the candidate never named his rival.
Now when he does weigh in, it is usually more in sorrow than the joyful, stylized anger that fueled his 2000 campaign.
McCain's resigned tone emerges most frequently when he talks about torture and immigration, both issues that he presents as reflecting "what America is all about," as he said of the waterboarding question in last week's debate. At the time, he did not attack Romney as much as scold him for failing to reject the practice; McCain said he was "astonished" by the former Massachusetts governor's position.
Like many of his rivals, McCain often speaks critically of Hillary Clinton in debates and speeches. But where Mike Huckabee has joked about putting her on the "first rocket to Mars" and Giuliani has mimicked her speech, McCain - who in 2000 bombastically pledged to "beat Al Gore like a drum" - usually goes out of his way to insist he would run a civil race against Clinton in the general election.
"This will be a respectful debate," McCain said to applause at a town-hall meeting in Atkinson last week. "I won't imitate her voice, and do anything but treat her with respect."
Elsewhere his "Straight Talk Express" bus seems to be openly rooting for Huckabee, and McCain now rarely lets an hour pass without volunteering his admiration, often unprompted, for his opponent's debating skill or quips.
Indeed, McCain often appears to be approaching the debates less as a competitor than as a spectator. When asked what he thought of Giuliani's "sanctuary mansion" attack on Romney, the best McCain could offer was a review of his opponent's comedy stylings. "I thought that was a pretty good line," he said. 