McCain Booted by Watchdogs He Once Aided

Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain was a board member of Project Vote Smart. He hasn't taken its so-called "Political Courage Test."

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has lost his seat on the board of Project Vote Smart, a nonpartisan group whose so-called "Political Courage Test" is intended to measure candidates' willingness to go on record regarding important issues. McCain joins the other leading presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY), in declining to complete the test.

Project Vote Smart has 40 full-time staffers working to track every utterance made and vote logged by candidates for public office in the United States, according to its president, Richard Kimball.

The test, Kimball says, is part of a campaign Project Vote Smart undertakes every two years to measure the "deterioration of the people's ability to acquire information that was argued as essential during the Constitutional Convention 200 years ago." The test asks candidates, for instance, to go on record concerning abortion, indicating whether the procedure should be legal, illegal or legal only during the first trimester.

Kimball says that when the first test was administered in 1996, 72 percent of candidates satisfactorily completed the questionnaire. This year, he says, that figure is down to 48 percent.

Candidates' willingness to take the test has declined, he says, "almost exactly in proportion to the amount of money they have. The more money they have, the more ability they have to control message and the less likely they are to get outside of their pollster-approved safety net."

Rules on the form prohibit candidates from altering the wording of any question or answering beyond the word limit. Candidates may leave 30 percent of the issue areas blank, but it's evidently too much to ask of some candidates, Kimball says.

"It takes courage," he says. "Both major political parties now train their candidates not to provide that information, to stay in control of their message, to stay on their pitch."

Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM) completed the test, as did fellow former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and Libertarian candidate Mike Gravel. "The ones that remained standing are those that are playing the game pretty safe," Kimball says.

As far as how aggressive Project Vote Smart is in reaching out to candidates, Kimball says they contact individuals at least six times in advance of the deadline. He also says leaders in both parties help, as do the editorial boards from over 200 major news organizations around the country, including those of the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, and the Dallas Morning News.

McCain's failure to complete the test was a shock, Kimball says. Not only was the senator a former board member, Kimball says, McCain had faithfully completed the test in the past and was one of its public champions.

"We're not sure what happened," he says. "We had the same problem with Bill Bradley, who was on the board. ... So it's not unique. But it's unusual. It surprised us. It was very disappointing."