WASHINGTON - In a blow to George W. Bush's bid to unify the Republican Party, negotiations for a May 9 meeting between the nominee-in-waiting and vanquished rival John McCain nearly broke down Thursday in a dispute that widened the rift between their two camps.
Senior McCain advisers said the first face-to-face meeting since the Arizona senator left the presidential race would likely be postponed - if not canceled - in a disagreement over the agenda. Bush advisers said they were still confident the session would be held. Aides in both camps spoke only on condition they not be identified.
In an effort to salvage the event, which is important to the political futures of both McCain and Bush, their top advisers planned to meet Friday in the office of 1996 GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole in Washington. ''Governor Bush is looking forward to meeting as scheduled with Senator McCain,'' said Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer.
The dispute exposed layers of mutual mistrust and animosity that will complicate Bush's efforts to embrace McCain and his influential bloc of independent-minded voters.
Bush and McCain need a successful meeting for different reasons. Bush wants to unify the party and appeal to McCain backers. The Arizona senator, who still has presidential ambitions, wants to show Republicans he is a party man.
The meeting would have downsides for both men, too. Bush is unlikely to gain McCain's endorsement, which he needs to help court independent voters. And McCain fears he could damage his political maverick image if he unites with Bush at a meeting that independent voters recognize as, in the words of one aide, ''a political charade.''
''The status of the meeting is tenuous,'' said McCain spokesman Todd Harris. ''We feel that any meeting between Senator McCain and Governor Bush should be a substantial one. We don't view a meeting whose primary purpose is to go over once again whether John McCain wants to be vice president - when everyone knows he doesn't want to - falls into the substantial category.''
McCain and his advisers have been chafing ever since Bush took the unusual step last week of announcing that he would ask McCain in the meeting whether he was willing to serve as vice president.
McCain has said repeatedly that he doesn't want the job. Bush has been under pressure from some Republicans who think McCain's appeal is worth a full-court effort to get him on the ticket. McCain and his advisers believed that Bush was turning the meeting into a high-profile forum for the Arizona senator to take himself out of the running.
Their discomfort with that notion suggests that some top McCain supporters want him to remain a vice presidential prospect. Some of them say they suspect that McCain could be persuaded to serve on the ticket if Bush waged a sincere campaign to do so.
Bush's pledge to pop the question to McCain also guaranteed a ''circus atmosphere'' at the meeting, a senior McCain adviser said. The advisers saw it as an attempt to narrow the agenda, which McCain had hoped would include fruitful discussions about campaign finance reform, Social Security, military spending and his role in the Republican National Convention.
McCain's advisers were preparing a list of suggested agenda items to submit to the Bush campaign Friday when a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak stirred up the pot. Novak said unidentified Bush advisers expected ''little satisfaction'' from the meeting and might prefer ''a short, unhappy get-together in Pittsburgh than a long, tendentious partnership.''
McCain, traveling in Vietnam to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, was angered by the column. He told aides to cancel the meeting unless they could be assured that Bush wanted to hold substantial talks on a variety of topics.
McCain advisers said they tried for several hours to reach Bush's team but their calls were not returned. Bush's advisers, meanwhile, said they never received the calls.
McCain strategist John Weaver and Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh eventually talked by telephone. Bush advisers said they were assured by Weaver that the meeting could still be held as scheduled but that it was in jeopardy.
Weaver and Allbaugh already had planned to conduct their first substantial planning session on the Bush-McCain event Friday.
In a sign of how deep the resentment runs, Weaver won't meet with his counterpart Karl Rove because of a long-running dispute with the Bush aide.
The fallout came just as Bush seemed to be stepping up his efforts to reach out to McCain and his supporters.
Senior Bush advisers, in interviews before the meeting was put in jeopardy, said the governor was looking for common ground on campaign finance reform - McCain's signature issue. They said, for example, that Bush planned to tell McCain that he supported efforts to require disclosure of donors to special interest groups that spend unlimited, unregulated donations on political ads.
And on Tuesday, Bush telephoned Warren Rudman, a McCain ally and former New Hampshire senator who was harshly criticized by Bush allies during the primaries. Two people familiar with the telephone calls said Bush expressed regret for the tone of the campaign. Rudman would only say, ''It was a reaching out call. He seems to be reaching out to McCain supporters.''