Republican senators got an unwelcome jolt last week at one of their usually uneventful Tuesday lunch meetings -- a poll that showed they were in deep trouble. The poll, conducted by the Republican National Committee during the first week of September, gave the president his highest positive rating ever - - almost 65 percent. For the first time in Clinton's presidency more Americans "strongly approved" of his performance than "strongly disapproved."
That was not the worst of it. For the first time this year, the numbers showed that more Americans wanted Democrats to control Congress than Republicans, and that Democrats were ahead on the "generic ballot" for November 1998. But what really rattled the senators was that, when asked what issues they cared most about, Americans had moved one new item into the first tier along with the old standbys of crime, education, and the like. The new issue: campaign-finance reform, which had moved from 2 or 3 percent in previous polls to double digits as the number one issue of concern.
With John McCain ready to force a confrontation on campaign reform in the Senate against the wishes of most of his GOP colleagues, there was a fair amount of senatorial murmuring about looking for a way to avoid being cast as simple defenders of the status quo. The politics of campaign-finance reform could be more interesting over the next few weeks than most pundits currently expect. And more damaging, considering that McCain's proposal is a constitutional catastrophe.