John McCain

Immediately after John McCain became the presumptive GOP presidential nominee Tuesday, discussion among party insiders immediately switched to what possible strategy the maverick Republican could use to unify the party.

 McCain, himself, said he planned to reach out to people in different factions of the party the same way he has for the past several months on the campaign trail. He intends to meet and greet people and look for points of agreement based on American principals.

 There’s nothing wrong with McCain’s approach, but there’s a more qualified person to unify the Republican party, said Nathan Gonzales, political editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter based in Washington, D.C.

“Hillary Clinton will be able to unify Republicans better than any Republican can,” Gonzales said.

“I don’t think there’s going to be people who have disliked McCain for years who all of a sudden are going to say, ‘Oh, he’s a great guy!’ But, if they say, ‘Oh well, President McCain or President Hillary Clinton?’ I think for a lot of Republicans, President Hillary Clinton is scarier than President John McCain,’” he said.

John McCain

Bruce Ash, a national  committeeman for Arizona, told me that he expected John McCain would clean up nationwide on Super Tuesday.

“His strength is coming out in full force tonight,” Ash said as a band played “Stars and Stripes Forever” at McCain’s victory party at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa on Tuesday night.

“No matter who the nominee is for the Democrats, I believe the choices are clear. The choices are stark and distict. And I believe Republicans in Arizona, from the top of the ticket down, are going to prosper as a result of Sen. McCain’s candidacy,” Ash said. ” believe he is going to have long coattails across the country. And I truely believe that. That’s not just fluff that a committeeman gives you for the paper.”

Bill and Hillary Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton was on his best behavior during a campaign rally for his wife and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday in Tempe.

After making a series of remarks that were considered hostile toward fellow Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in previous weeks, he barely mentioned Obama at Arizona State University.And when Bill Clinton did mention Obama, either by name or inference, he had only positive things to say.

He started his hour-plus speech by giving a recap of the televised Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Obama, which was broadcast when everyone at the rally was standing in line waiting to get in.

Bill Clinton reported that they had a civilized discussion about the issues. He said, “They told some of the people in this country who have been using their positions to try to divide the Democrats that we are going to be united in November.”

Perhaps Bill Clinton was referring to himself as one of “those people.”

 At the end of his speech, he sort of mentioned Obama again.

 “Do I think it will be a great thing when we have our first woman president? Of course, I do,” he said.

“I have to tell you, I think it will be a great thing when we have our first African-American president, our first Hispanic president, our first Asian-American, our first Native-American president, our first Arab-American president, our first Jewish president, our first Muslim president, our first you-name-it president. America is not about catagories. America is about ideas and all of us ought to be part of a common humanity,” he said.

A couple of other observations…

Bill Clinton’s speech was something of a rerun of Hilliary Clinton’s speech the week before in Laveen.

They both covered healthcare, energy, global warming, education and foreign policy. They both took a couple of jabs at President Bush. They both asked members of the audience to raise their hands if they knew someone without health insurance. They both talked up Al Gore. They even told the same antidote about an injured Iraq war veteran that Hillary Clinton met.

 There were a couple of important differences though.

Hillary Clinton moved through her version of her stump speech in 37 minutes. Bill Clinton labored through his version of her stump speech in one hour, three minutes. And while I didn’t count, it seemed like Hillary Clinton got far more laughs than Bill Clinton managed. She also seemed to get more buy-in from the crowd.

Hillary Clinton gave a rally speech. Bill Clinton gave a policy lecture.

Whoever thought that Hillary Clinton could ever supersede Bill Clinton in the speech-making department?