The man in the grass hut on Bora Bora was boiling and it wasn't the heat. It was the message on the fax machine. John McCain was supposed to be resting from his valiant efforts to wring the Republican nomination from the party's crown prince, Texas governor George W Bush. The Bush campaign was supposed to be tip-toeing through the sand bearing hibiscus blossoms and soft words of reconciliation: John, our hearts really weren't in it, when we spent a few million on TV in the primaries to say that you're in favour of breast cancer and dirty air and virtually in the pocket of the Vatican. It was just politics, so let's make up.
McCain's aides, seething back at base, had expected to be reporting the bribes they were being offered to secure McCain's endorsement of Bush. The Democratic nominee, Al Gore, has wiped out the 20 point lead Bush had last autumn and where the McCain voters go will decide whether the Republicans can relive the glory of 1980 when Ronald Reagan recaptured the White House from the Democrats.
George W is no Ronald R. He wanders off script. The sting in the fax to the bush hut reported the content of an interview with the New York Times, in which Bush dismissed the idea that anything McCain had said might have made an impact on him. "No, he didn't change my views." All McCain did was "force me to play to my better strengths". As for the curious idea that he might offer concessions to McCain's favourite causes, Bush was downright patronising. "No, I think what I need to do is explain to John that we agree a lot more than we disagree..."
Explain again to John, while you're about it, Governor, why the huge surge in turnout in the Republican primaries had nothing to do with the enthusiasm McCain aroused. When that point was put to Bush by the Times reporters, he responded cockily, "Well, how come he didn't win?" None of this played big in Bora Bora. The official line is that Bush's feelings - not his words - have been misrepresented. Privately there is recrimination. The way one eminent Republican put it to me was: "What the hell were our guys doing leaving him alone with the Times for an hour - with the Times for Godssake!"
The trouble now for the Republican machine is that Bush's responses betray the reality of deep differences. The little outbreak of nomination hubris reminds everyone that the bigger picture is of a party with a split personality. The personal affront may be appeased with a little dextrous grovelling, proud and prickly though McCain is. Today he can carry his suntan into the Senate on the prostrate forms of Bush apologists. And a one-on-one meeting with Bush, coupled with the promise of the defense secretary's job, may yet produce the much desired photo-op of John and George displaying a comradely rictus. The bigger question is not so susceptible. It is how the Republican elephant can be put together again so that trunk and tail proceed in the same direction.
Millions of restive Republicans, and potential party members, have voted for McCain's vow to drive the money men from the temple. They have the fervour of Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moosers, who broke from the Republican party in 1912 when Teddy failed to win the nomination from his "reactionary" protege William Howard Taft. Rather more millions of regular Republican voters have taken Bush's view that cash is a form of free speech, in particular that they must have the right to take as much of it as they can get from the lobbies to offset the Democratic contributions from the unions. And McCain's reformists recoil from the pressure of the Christian right on a range of social issues; the Bush people embrace the evangelicals. And the Bush Republicans promise $483bn of tax cuts over five years which the new Bull Moosers regard as reckless and a sop to the rich.
It is hard to see how the elephant can be put together again this year without resembling a mouse. If Bush were to compromise on his big tax cut, say, he would lose the central issue of his campaign which is to give the budget surplus "back to the people" and not spend it on programmes devised in Washington. If McCain accepts a fudge on any of the issues, he will lose Honest John's levitating halo of high principle. He has sworn he will not use his delegates to split the party at the convention.
The third clear option for McCain and his followers is to sit this one out, campaigning for their causes but not committing to Bush. If Bush wins in November, they become a footnote to history. But if he loses badly, the new Bull Moosers could be the foundation of a reconstructed party in 2004. It would be four years of torment for McCain. He would be accused of handing the election to Gore (for whom he has no time). Sort of what he endured while a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.