McCain's greatest asset in the general election (if he were the nominee) is simultaneously his greatest weakness in the primary: his status as a "maverick" within the Republican Party. Time and again, he has moved against the interests of conservatives... only to turn right around and bite moderates on the ankle.

Being a maverick means McCain has no natural power base within the party.

Republican Moderates

Moderates have several very significant problems with John McCain:

• Moderates hate the fact that he is strongly anti-abortion, the litmus test among liberal Republicans as it is among all Democrats.
• He's also pro-Iraq War, going even farther than the administration in calling for hundreds of thousands of additional troops to be sent in to un-Iraqify the fight and turn Iraq once more into a protectorate (would be bring Paul Bremer back to serve as permanent colonial governor of Mesopotamia?)
• He also supports Bush's attempt to pick judges who would move the federal courts towards judicial conservatism, rather than activism; the Souter wing of the Republican Party, like the Democrats, sees an activist court as the great bulwark against the hated conservatives.

Conservative Republicans

But on the conservative side, McCain fares even worse:

• He opposes tax cuts.
• He pushed through the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), better known as McCain-Feingold in the Senate, which most conservatives see as a terrible assault on freedom of speech.
• He was the primary organizer of the so-called "Gang of Fourteen," which conservatives see as having thwarted their chance to formally reject judicial filibusters by changing the rules of the Senate.
• He has attacked, belittled, and smeared George W. Bush many times since 2000, blaming Bush for a scurrilous attack on McCain during the South Carolina primary. Even after campaigning for Bush in 2004, McCain has made it clear in many ways that he still blames Bush for the push-poll.

I have yet to hear from a single conservative who believes Bush himself, rather than some local campaigner operating on his own, was actually responsible for the nasty "push-poll" that implied McCain had fathered a "black child." Bush has never campaigned that way before or since, and it makes no sense that he would do so then, when it was already unlikely that McCain's New Hampshire momentum would carry over into the South -- when running against a popular Southern governor.

• He reflexively and viciously attacked the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth when they began to question John Kerry's fabricated heroism in Vietnam; some see this as one Vietnam vet sticking up for another -- but mostly I've heard conservatives seeing this as one senator sticking up for another (McCain is almost fanatical about Senate power and prestige).
• A lot of conservatives want to see the U.S. begin to withdraw from Iraq, turning over more and more of the responsibility for protecting that country to the Iraqi army... while McCain wants to send massive numbers of troops to retake the country as an American protectorate, canceling all the democratic gains of the last year. There is even the suspicion that McCain has a secret plan to reinstitute the draft in order to get an Army big enough to do so.

To me, at least -- though I'm more of a libertarian from the Right than a conservative -- it seems as though the Democrats want Iraq to be Vietnam so we can lose again... while McCain wants Iraq to be Vietnam so we can win it this time... but in Vietnam style, i.e., to destroy Iraq in order to save it. But I don't want to refight Vietnam on anybody's terms; I want us to fight -- and win -- in Iraq on the terms we have chosen: democratizing Iraq as the first step in democratizing the Middle East. McCain would set foreign policy back thirty years.

"Outsider" Primary Voters

Without a base on either the moderate or conservative side, where can McCain turn for support in the primaries? Certainly not to any huge influx of new voters, as Arnold Schwarzenegger got in California (running as a maverick Republican in the recall of Gray Davis) or as Jesse Ventura got in Minnesota (running as a Perotista). There are several factors working against McCain becoming the sort of "movie-star candidate" who has been elected before (Dwight D. Eisenhower, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Sonny Bono, Schwarzenegger, and Ventura):

• First is McCain's temperment: he is widely seen as one of the biggest hotheads in Washington, which is saying quite a lot. He also holds a grudge, and he comes across as a mean man.
• One factor rarely mentioned: McCain's age. In 2008, he will be 72 years old. The oldest man ever elected to his first term as president was Ronald Reagan, of course; he was 69, but he looked much younger. (Reagan was 73 when he ran in 1984, but that was for reelection, after a widely successful first term. Different species entirely. Yet even so, his age became an issue in his reelection until he deftly defused it in his first debate with Walter Mondale.) McCain, by contrast, definitely looks his age, with snow-white hair and a skin condition. Folks may argue that this is an unfair criterion... but "politics ain't beanbag," appearance counts, and it will become an issue.

The only person older than McCain to run for his first term was Sen. Bob Dole... and he lost to a scandal-ridden and politically self-destructive Bill Clinton in 1996... not a good precedent for McCain.

• His status as a four-term senator from Arizona, who will have served nearly twenty-two years in the Senate by the time of the 2008 primaries, forever closes the door to him being considered a "Washington outsider." He is a consummate insider.

Conclusion

Note: McCain is a senator with no experience as an executive at any level of government. Although this makes it very tough to win in the general election, it's not a drawback in gaining the nomination, oddly enough: of the fifteen presidential elections since World War II, six have included a Democratic or Republican nominee whose highest political office was as U.S. senator.

Likewise, it's not particularly a problem that he's already a primary loser; in those same fifteen elections, at least five eventual nominees had previously run and lost in a presidential primary campaign: Al Gore ran for president in 1988 but lost the nomination to Michael Dukakis; Bob Dole ran for president in 1980, as did George H.W. Bush -- both later became nominees (in 1996 and 1988, respectively). Ronald Reagan made a serious play for the nomination in 1976, almost dislodging the incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford. And of course George McGovern ran in 1968, losing the nomination to Hubert Humphrey (also coming in behind Eugene McCarthy).

So let's take those two canards off the table: they're important for the general election -- only one senator (Kennedy) and only two former presidential-primary losers (Reagan and Bush-41) actually won the office... but they don't mean Jack in the primary.

However, I simply cannot see how McCain gets nominated:

• If primary voters are looking for a Washington outsider, a maverick, a dark horse candidate with a strong emotional appeal, they already have a better one: former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
• If they're looking for a conservative, they have several to choose from, particularly Sen. and former Gov. George Allen of Virginia and Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.
• If they want a moderate, there is always Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.
• If it looks as though 2008 will be the Year of the Woman, then perhaps Kay Bailey Hutchison will throw her head into the ring. Besides, McCain probably looks terrible in pumps and a dress.
• And if, perversely enough, the GOP primary electorate is desperate for a Washington insider and deal-maker... well, there's always Bill Frist of Tennessee.

There simply is no compelling reason to think that McCain can prevail over all these gentlemen, except for the fact that the mainstream media love him; he's their favorite Republican. But that can hardly be considered a mark in the plus column!

UPDATE: In this piece on the 2008 nomintion, I tackled the question "will he be?" My old blogmate Captain Ed asks the other side of the issue: "should he be?"

In Does John McCain Stand For Anything?, the Captain lands in the "No" column with a resounding smackdown. This is a must read!