Obama is making McCain look like a 5th grader

Ordinary adults must try their luck at a series of questions targeted at the fifth-grade level. The adults will be asked questions from elementary school textbooks. There are five children as classmates that can help the adults through out the process. The contestants have the opportunity to answer 10 subject questions for 500,000 and one additional question to win a million dollars.

John McCain's War on the White House
The campaign-finance victory was only the beginning

PAUL ALEXANDERPosted Jun 07, 2001 10:46 AM
McCain's office, in one of Phoenix's countless business complexes, is a surprisingly modest room decorated in a calculatedly plain manner. Before an old wooden desk sit two ordinary-looking wooden chairs. Here he discusses the piece of legislation that has become an obsession in his last six years: McCain-Feingold. The bill, passed by the Senate, bans the unlimited "soft" money individuals and organizations can contribute to political parties and allows only "hard" money, capped at $2,000 per individual. The bill also requires the disclosure of contributors to so-called issue ads that run sixty days or less prior to Election Day. How did he pass a bill, opposed by much of his own party, that he has been trying to pass for so long?

"There was a combination of factors, including good luck," McCain says. "Napoleon said you make your own luck; still, timing was fortunate. The fact that [Senate Minority Leader] Tom Daschle held the Democrats — if there's an unsung hero, it's Tom Daschle. The pressure from the presidential campaign also helped. There was also a desire on the part of the Republican leadership to get this thing off the table, because we had made it clear we were going to keep coming back and coming back." McCain pauses. "Oh, one other factor," he continues. "Denise Rich. There was the appearance of a pardon being bought. When people heard about a million dollars going to the DNC, they thought there was a connection. By the way, I don't know if there was a connection — I don't know if I'll ever know — but the appearance was very critical."

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay has been adamant that he will kill McCain's bill — a fortunate development for the Bush forces, since, according to McCain chief of staff Mark Salter, "the White House would be very happy if the bill never came to the president." But DeLay doesn't have to kill the House version of McCain-Feingold, known as Shays-Meehan; all he has to do is alter it enough for the bill to end up in conference. Many times, bills remain in conference so long, they end up dying. "If McCain-Feingold goes to conference and the Republicans try to screw it up," McCain warns, "we'll just shut down the Senate again. I mean, look, I'm not going to let it sit in conference." Once the bill passes both the House and the Senate, it will go to President Bush to be signed into law. Will Bush sign a bill about which he has expressed ambivalence? "I hope so," McCain says, "but he's been very unclear about that. He said he'd like to have a bill he could sign, but he's not said if this one is it or not."

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"Of course, John McCain is hurting Bush," says one Republican. "After the primaries, the Bush people all said, 'We hate John McCain.' Anyone for John McCain was on the Bush hit list. McCain has just used that as fuel for the fire. He said, 'OK, I'll get you good.' And that's what he's doing. I mean, Bush will be forced to sign that damn thing" — McCain-Feingold — "which he doesn't want to do."