By WILLIAM SAFIRE
John McCain's presence onstage was powerful, and his no-apologies message went to the heart of the matter in this campaign: The war against terror is being fought for a noble cause and the candidate most likely to persevere in it is George W. Bush.
Speaking to a couple of us at his birthday party the night before, the most trusted man in America made clear that his unequivocal embrace of Bush was not mere "campaign oratory," in Wendell Willkie's phrase. He was certain that his former rival had the gumption to see it through, and could not be certain that his Senate friend John Kerry had that necessary executive decisiveness.
As a certified media cynic, I asked myself: Was this party loyalty a shrewd ploy to position himself at the head of a McCain-Rudy Giuliani ticket in 2008 capable of whipping a bipartisan Hillary Clinton-Colin Powell combine? Nope. Cynicism is out of place with McCain; he's the straightest shooter in U.S. politics, especially appealing because he fires in all directions.
The significance of an enthusiastic McCain - buttressed by the cheerfully combative Giuliani and the mainstreaminator Arnold Schwarzenegger - is the centrist glow that the trio of star Republicans gives the Bush-Cheney ticket. But the big political question is: Are these foreign-policy hard-liners window dressing to give the impression of a big G.O.P. tent, or does their popularity presage a genuine move toward the libertarian center? To answer that, go first to a deeper question about the fundamental Bush strategy.
Is it to rev up the faithful, to turn out the true believers (I reject the cliché "energize the base"), thereby attracting to the polls a supposed four million evangelicals and social-issue stalwarts who failed to turn out last time around?
Or is the Karl Rove master plan to feed the social-issue right and deficit hawks a little red meat now and then - a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a promise to halve the deficit in the next term - while accentuating the heavy spending on prescription drugs, No Child Left Behind and other evidence of compassionate conservatism? That would appeal to the center, the "swing voter."
To answer that, we must go to an even deeper question (nobody promised you an easily understood column). Is the electorate split in half - I've dropped "polarized," too - as the squeaker of 2000 indicated and posterior-protecting pollsters are telling us? Or is there still a swing vote, the usual legion of the undecided and the mind-changeable, to whom the political appeal in the final months should be made?
These swingers, if they still exist, are not the politically inert, exemplified by the legendary scold who said, "I never vote - it only encourages them." Rather, they are what strategists in both parties secretly derogate as "the unreliables": sometime supporters who can be inveigled to vote if you assuage their guilt while dragging them to the polls.
Many pollsters and thumbsuckers insist that unreliables are down to 5 percent in a race too close to call. If that were so, the wise strategy would be to concentrate on your base.
But in my in-shallow survey of convention partygoers this week, conservative Alan Simpson and liberal Mario Cuomo agreed: perhaps up to 20 percent of registered voters are still switchable or motivatable. I concur in their old-fashioned, contrarian analysis.
If this fogy poll is correct, that would explain not just Kerry's all-out warrior pose in Boston but Bush's move middleward in New York. He's stuck for now with his compromise on stem cells. Nor can he budge on gay marriage; the 71 percent Missouri vote against makes impossible any present modification of his support for a constitutional amendment, but Dick Cheney's dissent softens the administration's stand, and few think an amendment would pass.
Thus, we see the G.O.P. platform committee's reluctant embrace of Bush's legal status for illegal immigrants (none dare call it amnesty, but the Hispanic vote is up for grabs), as well as the star turns for hard-line moderates like McCain, Giuliani and Schwarzenegger.
Reach to the middle, or press your social-issue strength? Bush will be resolute about exporting freedom and holding down taxes and empowering the individual. Otherwise, base, shmase - it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing voter.
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