I wrote here last night about my perception that John McCain’s campaign as the presidential nominee of the Republican party was starting off on the wrong foot.

Emblematic of that to me was McCain’s decision to tear to Washington to receive a personal endorsement from George W. Bush today.

Mind you, I would expect nothing other than the sitting Republican president to endorse his party’s nominee to be his successor. I would also expect the nominee to accept the invitation to meet with the President and to accept his endorsement. The picture above shows a meeting that took place in 1972, involving Senator George McGovern (left) and former President Lyndon Johnson days after McGovern had accepted the Democratic nomination for president. McGovern had been a critic of Johnson’s policies in Vietnam. But, in spite of the deep differences between the two men, McGovern did go to LBJ’s ranch to collect the former President’s endorsement. It’s the kind of thing nominees do to foster party unity as they head into their fall campaigns.

But the way in which John McCain handled the invitation to the White House that he received from President Bush is emblematic of what I think is his campaign’s misinformed approach to his general election run for the presidency. Last night, even before many returns had come in from the four primaries held yesterday, members of the McCain entourage leaked word of the White House meeting and presidential endorsement to the media, saying that the campaign had a “surprise” for everyone. Today, the endorsement visit was treated like a visit to the North Pole to see Santa.

My guess is that the McCain people see it as a big deal. That’s because for the past several weeks now, McCain has put his courtship of members of the neoconservative and social conservative base into hyperdrive. I mentioned yesterday all the cozy time he spent recently with televangelist Rod Parsley. I didn’t mention his time with Pastor John Hagee, who urges support of Israel, not out of any love for Israel, but because he thinks that through Israel, he and likeminded people can push God’s hand in bringing about Armageddon and the return of Christ.

Granted, the neocons, social conservatives, and looneycons, all for different reasons and varying levels of validity, have never much cared for John McCain. But he doesn’t need to play up to them now. No matter how Bill Cunningham, Rush Limbaugh, or others inveigh against McCain, he is a conservative and he is the nominee of the Republican Party. Members of what have become base Republican constituencies since 1980 are not going to vote for Obama or Clinton this fall. Nor, as they learn more about the platform of the Democratic nominee, are they likely to sit on their hands, saying, “A plague on both their houses.”

Assured of roughly 35 to 40% of the vote even if this turns out to be a Democratic year, which it most likely will be, McCain is free to do what any bold, creative leader has done with a broken political party: Reshape it and so create a new coalition, a new governing majority. It’s the sort of high stakes game that should appeal to the courageous, former Navy fighter pilot.

Instead, McCain appears to have bought into the Rovian formula for winning general elections. (Which is the mirror image of the Clinton approach on the Democratic side.) It’s a minimalist, get-out-the-base strategy. The idea is to excite the base by throwing out lots of red meat, plenty of references to Ronald Reagan, and lots of hot button issues and then squeak by.

But this year, with concerns over the economy rising and frustration with the war continuing, the Republican nominee needs to expand the party’s base. John McCain cannot do that by energizing a shrunken Republican base that puts off the very people he will need to win in 2008, persuadable independents, Dems, and Republicans who regard Bush’s domestic and national security policies as betrayals of conservative and Republican principles.

John McCain is the only Republican candidate who ran this year who had (and still has) a shot at reshaping the Republican coalition for victory in 2008. He is temperamentally suited to the task, something demonstrated by the fact that, in spite of being clearly conservative, he has, over the years, shown a willingness to reach across the political divide, winning friends and admirers of other political persuasions along the way.

What’s more, it’s only by undertaking a bold reshaping of the Republican Party, tapping back into its tradition of Progressive political reform (Lincoln, Hayes, Garfield, Theodore Roosevelt), environmental activism (Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, even Richard Nixon), and national security realism and frugal spending (Dwight Eisenhower) that Republicans have a chance of forging a new majority in this year’s election. Without such boldness, the Republicans are likelier than not to lose the White House in 2008.

Cozying up to those who have made Republican a questionable brand name these days isn’t the formula for building such a majority.

Even the politically quixotic McGovern, who would lose the 1972 election by a landslide over his opposition to the War in Vietnam, understood the impossibility of building a new, winning coalition by being too closely identified with the discredited elements of his party’s past. That’s why, as I recall, he was accompanied by only one photographer for his visit to LBJ’s ranch. While I remembered seeing the picture that recorded their visit back thirty-six years ago–no doubt because I have always been afflicted with the political bug, the grainy newspaper clipping above is the only image of the meeting I could find on the web.

An understated meeting like that between McGovern and Johnson would have been just fine for McCain as he met with President Bush today. The fact that his campaign handled things very differently indicates to me that neither it or the Arizona senator have figured out that in 2008, business as usual won’t do.