Bush camp firing in all directions for that swing vote

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 GOP 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 clich "energize the base"), thereby attracting to the polls a supposed 4 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?