 What doesn't the author believe about John McCain?
Newspapers, cramped for space, confined their headlines to Bush, Forbes, and Dole. As Fox News' Carl Cameron put it: "The other seven candidates could not crack double digits." At a news conference, an aide introduced Dole as the straw poll's "real winner." Dismissive coverage of Dole before the straw poll played to her advantage, as everyone marveled at her "surprisingly" strong third. The first of these is political experience, of which Bush has little and Forbes has almost none. Newspapers hail Dole's female followers as evidence "that she can attract new voters to the GOP." On Meet the Press , he called himself the "breakout candidate."
 he's the only experienced political candidate in the running
 he was trying to send a message about Ames being unimportant  he had a lot of courage and cunning to skip over Ames  he's the only experienced political candidate in the running  McCain could afford to miss Ames because of his support in other states