The loser of the looming Barack Obama-John McCain contest is entitled to a consolation prize: an all-expenses-paid, one-way ticket back to the United States Senate.
An Obama loss would shake American politics to its core, but the candidate said Wednesday that he’d adapt to life as a high-profile foot soldier in the Senate’s Democratic majority.
McCain hasn’t said whether he’d return to the Senate if he loses his White House bid — and his campaign is bristling at the very suggestion.
“McCain doesn’t plan on returning to the Senate,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said Wednesday. “He plans on winning the election because he’s absolutely qualified to be president of the United States.”
But friends and GOP insiders who’ve taken a sober look at the polls expect to see McCain back at the Capitol come January — and maybe even as early as a lame-duck session scheduled to start two weeks after the election. They’re just not sure what role he will play there.
“I think John will return to the Senate,” says a longtime friend of McCain’s. “The question is whether he’ll return to be a constructive force or whether he’ll be embittered. Only John can answer that.”
Operatives in both parties say that Obama’s defeat would have a tectonic impact outside of Washington — setting off a massive wave of angry soul-searching among Democrats who turned self-flagellation into an art form after a pair of losses to George W. Bush.
Yet Obama’s return wouldn’t greatly change the political order of the Senate. Still a freshman, the junior senator from Illinois would join Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John F. Kerry (D- Mass.) in the We-Were-Almost-President Caucus, and he’d still have to abide by the dictates set by a stable Democratic leadership which seems certain to pick up seats regardless of Obama’s fate.
Asked about a possible return, Obama told ABC’s Charles Gibson Wednesday: “I’m a relatively young man. You know, they say there’s no second acts in politics. But you know, I think there are enough exceptions out there that I think I could envision returning to the Senate and just doing some terrific work with the next president and the next Congress.”
McCain, by contrast, would have the potential to be a much bigger player in a much smaller, more troubled caucus.
“McCain is going to return to a shattered party,” said Republican strategist John Feehery, who was a senior aide to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). “But he’ll still be the biggest name in the Senate and the biggest name in Republican politics, and I think some people will rely on him to be the voice during these times… It’ll be up to him on whether he gives up or helps re-brand the party.”
“The problem is way bigger than John McCain,” said a top Republican staffer who has worked in both houses. “We don’t have any ideas, and we need ideas to connect” with independents.
But just because McCain has pushed a “maverick” reform agenda as a presidential candidate doesn’t mean his GOP colleagues in the Senate will let him do the same for them. Senior Republican aides say McCain’s willingness to challenge party leaders on immigration and earmarks has made him unpopular — and that losing the presidential election wouldn’t do much to burnish his reputation.
“Like John Kerry, who came back and went underground, McCain will likely return to Washington to find that he’s not the leader of his party,” said one top GOP Senate aide.
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...I'm so stealing that, LP!
