PRIMARY LESSONS - What McCain taught us.

Super Tuesday, in John McCain's Star Wars metaphor, was The Empire Strikes Back: a victory for money, bureaucracy, and technique with no surprises and not much good news for the rebels.

Partisan Democrats, of course, find considerable comfort in the outcome: George W. Bush, the inevitable Republican nominee, is damaged goods, an almost unanswerable reason for swallowing one's doubts and voting for Al Gore. And Gore, who looked like a sure loser at the beginning of the year, has turned into a better campaigner and the favorite to win in November.

Bush began with a first-rate slogan, "compassionate conservatism," aiming to capture the political center, and he did well so long as his alleged use of cocaine dominated the media. But when the focus of the campaign shifted from what Bush had done to what he was for, Bush became impossibly vague. His own incapacities aside, this was a matter of strategy, a pragmatic determination to present Bush as a candidate who could win precisely because of his lack of baggage. Of course, the Texas governor wound up looking weak and vacuous, Dan Quayle with a smirk. And when he lurched right in order to win South Carolina, Bush reinforced the belief that he is simply a suit for all seasons. After his appearance at Bob Jones University began to be challenged, Bush protested that he is not anti-Catholic, a response that misses the broader political point, which is not his personal beliefs but his willingness to suppress or mold those beliefs in the pursuit of short- term political advantage. There are plenty of worries about Bush's debts to the Republican Right, but no one is worried that he is Ian Paisley. The more dangerous concern is that he is a kind of conservative hippy, too adaptable to do more than go with the flow. And ironically, his campaign's efforts to shake this image by reinventing Bush the centrist will only confirm it, at least for those who are watching.

The real winner in Bush's victories is the Christian Coalition and, to some extent, the Religious Right generally. Last year, religious conservatives were in retreat, smarting from the impeachment debacle and increasingly regarded in Republican circles as a political albatross. When Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson attached themselves to Bush, it appeared to be just this side of surrender, a willingness to accept a candidate who was distancing himself from the Right at just about every turn. Perhaps they were just lucky; perhaps they recognized Bush's malleable vulnerability; in any case, the religious conservatives have demonstrated that while they cannot nominate a Republican candidate of their choosing, given any kind of interparty contest, they can probably decide the winner, whatever problems that causes later on.

Unfortunately, the influence of the Right may work to discourage mainstream Republicans from trying to reverse the tendency toward open primaries. It ought to be clear that there is something wrong with allowing people who are not members of a party to play a possibly decisive role in that party's decisions, especially since for the electorate, membership involves no commitment beyond a verbal declaration. Yet those Independents and Democrats who cross over into Republican primaries do add weight against the Right, and for Republicans interested in winning elections, that may be decisive: originally, the open primary in Michigan that John McCain won was designed as a protection for George Bush against a conservative insurgency. This year's anxieties, however, may cause Republican leaders not to multiply such experiments.

Democrats could have had a similar problem: Bill Bradley attracted Independents and even a few Republicans, though not enough to make the difference between winning and losing. Had the Republican race not been so competitive, Bradley's crossover vote might have been larger, but at bottom, Bradley's support was Democratic in a way that John McCain's was not Republican. As he realized late in the day, Bradley's best chance was to appeal to the Liberal Left, where Democratic discontents run strong. But Bradley's efforts in that direction were only marginally effective. Bradley, after all, in not a man of the Left; he is divided from Al Gore only by paper-thin distinctions. On trade issues, for example, Gore and Bradley were peas in a pod, both defenders of globalization and inclined to meek accommodation with China. The sparks in the Bradley-Gore contest were the result of egos more than issues, and compared to the Republican brawl, the Democratic race was as well-mannered as a cricket match. Democrats emerged from Super-Tuesday relatively united and much amused by the Republicans' troubles.

Still, Democrats have reason to be watchful, and not just because so many things can go wrong between now and November. In a three-way race, a poll taken just before Super Tuesday indicated that Bush and Gore would each get about 33 percent of the vote; McCain would get a quarter. The poll also indicated that beyond that core third of the electorate, Gore's current support is negative, discontented, and potentially up for grabs.

While John McCain's wit and candor helped him considerably, voters also were drawn to him by more fundamental concerns. Millions of Americans care that contemporary politics is so thoroughly dominated by money. Some are hopeful, like those drawn to McCain, some resigned, but all are resentful at the loss of something like a civic birthright. Similarly, while McCain's remedies were mostly inadequate or half- baked, he was also the only candidate to devote any serious attention to our radical and escalating inequality. Bradley and Gore talked, more or less seriously, about helping Americans with low incomes, but that compassionate liberalism falls short of a devotion to civic equality and community. And when Republican leaders chose to demonize McCain- otherwise a very conservative fellow partisan-rather than risk any reduction of the party's perennial advantage in fundraising or to surrender the improbable (and broadly unpopular) promise of a massive tax cut, they were virtually waving the banner of class, that dirty secret of our politics.

McCain's campaign reminded us that politics can be both for real and for fun; his leadership is flawed, to be sure, but strong and lively and evidently human, not a script prepackaged in focus groups or cyberspace. He offered a voice-sometimes murmuring, often incoherent- calling us back to democratic politics. In that sense, he wasn't Luke Skywalker so much as Princess Leia reminding Obi-Wan Kenobi of a half- forgotten past. We can at least hope that Al Gore was listening.

Wilson Carey McWilliams, a regular contributor, is the author of Beyond the Politics of Disappointment? American Elections 1980-98 (Chatham House).