Like Wednesday's child, Sen. McCain showed a good deal of woe over the results of Super Tuesday. When NBC's perspicacious Maria Shriver asked the senator how he felt about losing to governor Bush, he answered with a "Please, get out of here!" that left Ms. Shriver somewhat discombobulated. She, along with press commentators who consider this incident an affront, should know better if they really were the professionals that they claim to be. Ms. Shriver's question was just beef-witted, if at all a question, and the senator certainly could not feel good under the circumstances, nor could he spill his "feelings" on live television. Although Sen. McCain is not my favorite candidate, I am on his side in this tiff, and, had I been in his shoes, I would have replied even more gruffly.

Polls, pundits, and the mainstream press had prognosticated a Super Tuesday kinder to the senator. Similarly, the McCain campaign Web site displays a chronology of press releases that presaged a better showing. What happened?

I think that Sen. McCain launched his campaign poorly prepared, and putting too much trust in an unproven ability to improvise. The trump cards that gave him a head start were mostly image related, which the press loved. The image comprised, however, a mixed bag of authenticity and self-promotion bombast. His honorable conduct in his country's service and as a prisoner of war, along with a congressional record of unwavering attachment to conservative values, indeed belong in the category of authenticity. To be sure, there were a few glitches here and there, like the recent votes supporting the funding of political campaigns with tax money and the federal skimming of the states' tobacco settlements, but these may have been the first signs of a newfound ambition. At the start of the campaign, the senator's crusade against the corrupting effect of money on politics, which implicitly excused egregious incidences of illegal conduct in the Clinton-Gore camp, did not offer any remedy or action plan other than the improbable, flawed McCain-Feingold senate bill. His opposition to tax cuts that could benefit "the rich" invoked the very shibboleth of class envy routinely used by Democrats to rouse their troops. Then, he flubbed on the question of homosexuals in the military, approved the idea of putting women in combat, and made contradictory statements on the issue of abortion. At that point, his halo of conservatism in pieces, his campaign short of substance, candidate McCain, who still claimed to be Reagan's heir, proceeded to offend as many Republicans as possible and at the worst possible time, probably to strengthen his maverick image. Meanwhile, he had managed to misrepresent Gov. Bush's position on tax cuts and the Social Security surplus, thereby triggering a war of negative advertisements. In the week preceding Super Tuesday, Sen. McCain preferred to spend precious time and energy complaining about that very war he had started, at the expense of presenting good reasons for the electorate to vote for him. In a radio interview with Michael Reagan, the senator would only speak about his spat with Messrs. Falwell and Robertson over a controversy involving his friend and campaign manager Warren Rudman, a former "moderate" Republican senator adverse to tax cuts and infused with an imperial view of government. There, Sen. McCain just made a fool of himself and forsook a good opportunity to exploit free radio time in the company of a friendly host. This peculiar approach to seeking a Republican nomination produced the results that we know.

If the senator meant to effect serious government reforms, he should have worked at building a substantial coalition dedicated to that purpose in the senate, a place that he knows well. Regardless of possible presidential vetoes, common-sense reform bills properly advertised would have re-vitalized a Republican majority put on the defensive by Democrat campaigns of intimidation. But so far, Sen. McCain has preferred a lone-ranger, grand-standing approach that has alienated most of his colleagues. At this point, leading a reform movement from the Republican side will take much fence-mending, a bit of humility, a willingness to consider other opinions, and hard work. It will be instructive to watch Mr. McCain's course of action after the primaries, when he is back in the senate.

The case of Mr. Bradley, the other Wednesday child, is much simpler. At the beginning, Mr. Bradley announced that he was the candidate of ideas, and new ideas at that. His reputation as a reflective politician of the left held great promise for a Democrat party short of grand designs and ensconced in a rut of guerilla warfare. When the veil fell to reveal the new ideas, I started wondering whether Mr. Bradley was not emerging from a thirty-years deep sleep---which could also explain the man's general demeanor. The new ideas reduced to unimaginative extensions of the Johnson-Nixon Great Society, to wit, more government programs, universal health insurance, expansion of existing government programs, more racial preferences, and registration of all firearms. Mr. Bradley did not seem to know that his new ideas had long made their way into the Democrat agenda, probably while he was asleep. After reasoning that now was the time for such profligacy because we could afford it, he did not consider what would happen if the economy took a downward turn, thereby trashing his reputation for sharp intellect. From there, the Bradley-Gore reduced to rounds of one-upmanship scored by expense of taxpayer money, with short pauses that the former hoopster used to protest about his opponent's lies. In any case, the Democrats knew that the robot from Washington, who has the support of union money and the votes of government parasites, was in a better position to redistribute other people's income, and thorougly trounced Mr. Bradley.

Now that the field is clear, Gov. Bush's best chances lie in his ability to be himself, to shy away from canned scripts, and to keep the robot from "Love Story" on the defensive. Incidentally, I happen to support the governor.