John McCain learns you can't un-sell out.

Claremont, New Hampshire On a recent mid-July morning, John McCain bounded out of a silver SUV outside American Legion Post 29. So much for the cheering crowds--eagerly awaiting him was a gang of hecklers and fringe activists, including a 9/11 conspiracy theorist ("Senator, are you a victim of mind control?") and a man in a McCain mask dressed as a seaman and shaking a beggar's tin cup. A sign around his neck read: my campaign spends like a drunken sailor. That, of course, was a reference to one of the worst campaign meltdowns ever- -specifically, the fact that McCain has burned through nearly every penny of the $24 million his campaign has raised--leaving him bankrupt, hemorrhaging top staff, and humiliated. In Claremont, McCain was hoping to turn the page. He had come for a town-hall meeting with voters, the kind of unscripted forum crucial to his amazing 2000 New Hampshire primary win over George W. Bush. Back then, McCain lit up his town halls like a carnival barker. In 2000, the prevailing wisdom was that politics had become artificial, poll-tested, and money-infected- -a perfect formula for McCain's self-proclaimed "reform crusade." But these are different times. Sweating onstage in the stifling hall, McCain was peppered with questions about the slog in Iraq and his ties to Bush. "There is at least a perception ... that you have become too close to President Bush and that you have supported him too often," fretted one man who identified himself as a McCain 2000 voter. In the face of this, McCain labored to summon the magic of yore. He repeatedly promised his audience "a little straight talk"- -before offering some stale observations (the Iraq war was mismanaged, nuclear power can help slow global warming).What McCain didn't seem to understand is that advertising one's own candor is a bit like explaining a joke: It shouldn't be necessary. That he feels he has to, however, speaks volumes about how much McCain has changed since 2000. In hindsight, McCain's decision to run for president as the "Republican establishment" candidate seems utterly ludicrous. It's true that, stylistically, McCain was far better-suited to a freewheeling, unscripted candidacy. But, beyond that, becoming an Establishment Man was an ideological absurdity. Even today, the extent of McCain's leftward shift during and after his last presidential run remains underappreciated. When he last ran for president, McCain denounced Bush's tax cuts as unaffordable and unfairly tilted toward the rich. He described a GOP corrupted by business lobbyists and hostage to "forces of evil" like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. After his return to Congress, he went even further, championing a patients' bill of rights despised by the HMO industry and the Bush administration; pushing through a sweeping campaign finance reform bill that Bush signed unwillingly; enraging the NRA by pushing legislation to close the "gun show loophole"; and sounding the alarm over global warming. McCain even contemplated ditching the GOP altogether. In 2001, he discussed with Senate Democratic leaders the possibility of joining their party and mulled an independent presidential bid. It's not surprising, then, that however hard McCain tried to repent, his heresies were simply too much for conservatives to forgive. But McCain also ditched the core component of his identity that made him a rock star in the first place: his reform crusade. Political reform defined McCain's last candidacy; most inspiringly, McCain's heart truly seemed in it. Even as his 2000 campaign fizzled, McCain publicly vowed that his crusade would continue "tonight, tomorrow, the next day, the day after that, and for as long as it takes to restore America's confidence and pride in the practice and institutions of our great democracy." But, as McCain sought to lead a GOP in more desperate need of reform than ever, he changed his tone. Talk of big money corrupting politics was shelved as his campaign plotted to drown its rivals in $100 million in fund-raising. McCain curtailed his famous Senate floor speeches attacking his colleagues' pork-barrel spending. ("You haven't read about his gratuitously taking on other members on the floor in the last six months, have you?" his now-departed senior adviser, John Weaver, boasted in The New Yorker two years ago.) McCain admirably led devastating hearings into the Jack Abramoff scandal but assured his fellow GOP lawmakers that his investigation would not spread beyond craven lobbyists to the politicians who enabled them. McCain supporters argue that September 11 and the Iraq war crowded out the old reform spirit. "The world has changed, not John McCain," says one longtime associate. "People say he looks very somber," adds his old friend Orson Swindle. "But what has he been talking about? He's been talking about issues like the war, which is a pretty damn serious problem. People don't like to deal with those things. They liked the good-news Charlie." So McCain is now bringing Charlie back--going "back to the campaign he ran last time," as the associate puts it. But that won't be easy. First of all, McCain is saddled with his steadfast support for the Iraq war. Though it seems probable that rivals like Mitt Romney will soon break for cover on the war, McCain is as dug in as ever. (His advisers don't even dare recommend otherwise, they say.) Instead, McCain could look for narrow points of difference. "I wouldn't advocate a break from Bush," says Scott Reed, a McCain-aligned GOP lobbyist. Instead, Reed says, McCain should emphasize positions like his opposition to keeping Guantanamo Bay open--a stance that also recalls his moving experience as a prisoner in Vietnam, which some advisers fear has faded from the public's memory. "That's part of who John McCain is. It's part of his life experience. And it allows him to depart from a very unpopular Bush position," Reed says. (In Claremont, at least, McCain's call to close Guantanamo and "never [to] torture people in our custody again" was the day's biggest applause line.) One antidote to the grimness of Iraq is a strong return to reform as a theme. "John McCain will reform government," declared a bolded bullet point in a set of talking points recently distributed by his campaign. But, unlike in 2000, it's not clear that McCain really means it. In a July 23 speech in Michigan, McCain vowed to use presidential vetoes to rein in congressional spending and also to eliminate the alternative minimum tax's bite on middle-class families. But, while McCain spun both of those proposals as "reform," neither bears much resemblance to his Teddy Roosevelt-style crusading of 2000. (Backing middle- class tax cuts, which will expand the deficit, is hardly a model of political courage.) Meanwhile, McCain panned Democratic proposals to tax massive private- equity profits as income rather than capital gains. Shutting a tax loophole for hedge-fund billionaires during wartime? This once would have been a sweet-spot issue for McCain, who, borrowing from T.R., used to lament "the new malefactors of wealth." Instead, in Michigan, McCain sneered at the "fuss over 'reforming' the tax treatment of private equity firms" and the "mumbo jumbo" of Democrats trying to enact a "tax hike." Maybe standing up for hedge-fund managers really is McCain's idea of being a reformer. But it's hard to imagine many voters, particularly those who flocked to him in 2000, agreeing.