McCain faces uncertain future

Phoenix - After a lifetime spent staring down adversity and triumphing against the odds, John McCain has rightly earned the reputation as the king of the comebacks.

But the defeated Republican presidential candidate and Arizona senator may find it hard to rebuild his political career after Tuesday's heavy election loss to Barack Obama, analysts say.

McCain, 72, now faces an uncertain future as the shell-shocked Republicans attempt to regroup with an eye on mid-term elections in 2010 and the next White House race in four years time.

While aides to McCain have suggested he could return to the Senate and become a Republican elder statesman in the mould of Democratic lion Edward Kennedy, opinion is split over how influential he may be.

"If he was younger and likely to run for the presidency again the party could rally around him and he could be influential," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

"But that's not going to happen. His problem is that he doesn't have anywhere to go. And a lot of people are going to be angry, and will probably blame his campaign for the scale of the defeat."

McCain emerging as a Kennedy-style figure of the right was unlikely, Zelizer said. "After running against Jimmy Carter, Kennedy had a clearly defined role as the voice of American liberalism. He stood for a coherent and easily recognisable set of ideals," he told AFP.

A moderate voice

"John McCain doesn't really represent anything and in a sense that was part of the problem of his campaign."

However McCain could secure his legacy if he acts as a moderate voice seeking to shape Republican opinion in partnership with the Obama administration.

"He could be particularly effective if he reaches across the aisle to work with Obama," Zelizer said.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior scholar at the University of Southern California's school of Policy, Planning and Development, agreed.

"I think that's the role he must play - to be a bridge between Obama and the Republicans on the Hill," Bebitch Jeffe told AFP.

"It's clearly the kind of role that McCain feels comfortable in. He built his reputation on working across the aisle and that is what he has to do again. It makes infinite sense for him to attempt to work in partnership with Obama."

Republican strategist John Feehery, a senior aide to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, believes McCain can still be a pillar for Republicans to rally around as they recover.

Biggest name in the Senate

"McCain is going to return to a shattered party, 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," Feehery told Politico.com. "It'll be up to him on whether he gives up or helps re-brand the party."

But Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar with the Brookings Institution, recalled how McCain returned from his unsuccessful 2000 bid for the Republican nomination to be a thorn in the side of President George W Bush's administration.

"For a long while, he opposed the central pillars of the Bush administration, like on tax cuts for example and he really flirted with the Democrats," Mann told Politico. "This time, he'll find there are no friends on either side of the aisle."

Zelizer compared McCain to another beaten presidential candidate from Arizona, McCain's ideological hero Barry Goldwater.

"Barry Goldwater was admired and respected throughout the 1960s by conservative thinkers and intellectuals but he was marginalised by the party after his heavy defeat to Lyndon Johnson in 1964," Zelizer said.

Bebitch Jeffe said focusing on legislative issues, such as immigration reform, may offer a more likely route towards securing a legacy.

McCain and Ted Kennedy worked together on a failed 2007 bill that would have given legal status and a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

But during the election campaign McCain said he would no longer vote for the bill, claiming that voters saw securing borders as the greater priority.

He later insisted he had not flip-flopped on the issue and remained committed to its key provisions.

"Immigration could be the kind of area that McCain looks at again, and it's the sort of issue that he could work with Obama on," Bebitch Jeffe said.

"It could also be popular with Hispanic voters which is important for both McCain and Obama."

- AFP