Enter Hayworth
Thirteen years ago, I followed Phil Gramm for 10 days for The Atlantic. Along the way, he had an encounter with a local football star now running for Congress: JD Hayworth. Gramm offered some good advice on how to run against an incumbent. The encounter appeared in the story. It irritated Hayworth, who mentioned it to me when I sat beside him at a breakfast literally ten years later.
Shortly before the November 8 congressional election Gramm made a campaign appearance in behalf of a young Republican congressional challenger in Arizona. He listened to the young man deliver a bombastic, foolish speech and afterward took him aside for some unsweetened advice. "There are only two issues when running against an incumbent," he said. "Her record, and I'm not a kook. Forget the feel-good stuff. Say, This is her record; this is what I'm for. If a subject can't elect you to Congress, don't talk about it."
Hayworth won that race. Now he is taking aim at another incumbent: Senator John McCain. This time he is promising to run a positive campaign, one that does not attack the incumbent's record. He told Byron York:
Hayworth was careful not to say anything directly critical of McCain, but his words seemed calculated to send the message that McCain's time is past. "I think we all respect John as a historical figure," Hayworth told me. "The question is, who is best prepared to represent Arizona with a consistent, commonsense philosophy in the U.S. Senate?"
Since Hayworth called McCain a "historical figure," I asked whether Hayworth might go after McCain on the age issue -- McCain would be 74 years old when sworn in for a new term in January 2011. "Let me stress, it's not about age," Hayworth said. "I'm not on that kick. It's not age, it's time in office, and I think there's just a feeling that people want to see a U.S. senator not only from Arizona, but for Arizona. I have a lot of respect for John, and if I decide to run, I will be running for the U.S. Senate, not against John McCain."
We'll see how long that lasts.