Obama, McCain Forged Fleeting Alliance

"He's sending you a press release/letter for his leader," Salter recalled telling McCain. "He did something that you just don't do."

Days later McCain, an avid baseball fan, told Salter to draft in response the equivalent of a pitcher throwing at the batter's head to rattle him. "He told me to brush him back. . . . You don't do things like that," Salter said.

Salter admitted his stinging letter "probably put too much English on it." The missive was quickly released to the media.

"I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me . . . were sincere," McCain's letter began.

Within hours Obama fired back his own message, calling McCain's statements "regrettable" because "you have now questioned my sincerity."

Obama backers said his handling of the issue showed that, despite being largely untested on the national stage, he was not afraid to throw a political counterpunch, even at a veteran such as McCain, and that he was able to do so without reverting to the kind of angry response McCain used. "Let me assure you that I am not interested in typical partisan rhetoric or posturing," Obama wrote McCain.

Serendipitously, the two men appeared two days later next to each other to testify about reform proposals before Lott's committee, during which Obama sought to defuse the spat. He began his testimony by thanking "my new pen pal, John McCain" for his efforts on the ethics legislation. The committee room erupted in laughter.

In the end, Obama and McCain ended up on the outside looking in as Lott and leaders from both parties crafted a softened ethics package. It passed the Senate on a 90 to 8 vote on March 29, 2006. Obama and McCain -- who wanted tougher legislation banning corporate flights and requiring the disclosure of lobbyists bundling donations from their clients, among other items -- were among the eight "nay" votes.

"Everybody was posing for holy pictures. It was a lousy piece of legislation," Feingold said, praising Obama for voting no even though his entire leadership supported it.

The bill died as the House and Senate deadlocked over their differing versions. Soon after the 2006 elections removed Republicans from power, Reid, now majority leader, brought Feingold and Obama back into the reform effort. By mid-January 2007, on a 96 to 2 vote, the Senate had approved a tougher ethics bill that included a total ban on gifts and meals, outlawed cheap rides on corporate jets and provided more lobbyist disclosure -- almost every provision Obama and McCain had pushed for a year earlier. Both the House and Senate approved the final bill last summer.

In his floor speech Aug. 2, Obama noted that he and Feingold worked to make a tougher bill than the 2006 version, and offered only faint praise to McCain. "Last year, I and Senator Feingold and Senator McCain voted against it because we thought we could do better. So in January, I came back with Senator Feingold and we set a high bar for reform. And I'm pleased to report that the bill before us today comes very close to what we proposed."

McCain opposed the final bill, saying it did not go far enough to prevent special-interest earmarked spending provisions in legislation.