BY DICK MORRIS

John McCain's candidacy for president is a watershed event in our politics.  He stands as the representative of a vital constituency that demands a place in the sun -- the moderates and the Independents who populate America's center.   His candidacy signals the revolt of the Independents, the revolution of the moderates. 

After centuries of abdicating the nominating process to political bosses and decades of leaving it in the hands of extremist constituencies, those in the middle are finding their voice.  They refuse to cede to role of partisan gatekeeper to minorities and labor on the left or the Christian Coalition and the small business Babbits on the right.  Fed up with the radical left and the radical right, they have become the radical moderates.  Those at the center of our politics have finally tired of watching the political parties each bow slavishly to their own extremists in nominating candidates and writing platforms only to come, hat in hand, to the Independents soliciting their votes on election day.

Using their francise, these moderate and Independent voters are leveraging the rare opportunity of a nominating process in which neither party had an incumbent to go shopping for one of their own and confer upon him a party nomination.  Only once before (in 1988) since primaries became universal have both parties had open contests for their nominations.

First the Independents considered Bill Bradley, attracted by his modest, everyman demeanor and his husky voiced appeal to reason.  But soon, it became clear that he would fall before the pros. That he let Gore lie so easily about his record and was so flat-footed in rebuttal showed Independents that they need a flag bearer made of sterner stuff.

They found their hero in John McCain, a man whose baptism of fire in Vietnam seems to have purified his soul.  In the Senate, his two animating passions -- campaign finance reform and opposition to big tobacco -- are both contrary to the dogma of his party and show that he did not leave his courage behind in a North Vietnamese cage.  Next to the tortures of his sadistic captors, there is nothing the special interest contributors or party whips can do to him now.

But more interesting than the candidate is the crusade.  McCain speaks for those who ask that the political parties reflect the priorities of America, not those of their core constituencies.  If we are to be bound by a two-party system, let it be one which nominates, not mouthpieces of the right or the left, but centrists whom the plurality of the nation considers to be presidential material.

The time has come for centrists to take their rightful place at the core of the nominating process, just as they have long dominated the general elections of our nation.  But McCain will not win his party's nomination.  George Bush II will beat him.  The Super Tuesday results will be inconclusive, but the results a week hence, on March 14, when the South votes, will be devastating for the Arizona Senator. 

If he accepts his defeat, McCain will assume his place in an honored pantheon of heralds of a time that had not yet arrived, standing alongside the likes of William Jennings Bryan, Bob LaFollette, Al Smith, Adlai Stevenson, Barry Goldwater, and Eugene McCarthy.

But if McCain rejects the verdict of the right, heeds the call of the center and carries his banner of moderation, independence, and reform into the November election as a third candidate, he will, in my view, become the 43rd President of the United States of America.  In a three way race of Gore, Bush and McCain, I'll bet on McCain.  Voters will understand that the only way to rid our nation of the corruption at its core is to disenfranchise the two parties that now dominate our politics and empower the forces of reform by electing a third party president.

McCain could embrace the Reform Party or ignore it.  If Perot, Ventura, and company accept him, he would automatically get on the ballot in the 21 states where the Reform Party has standing and would inherit their $10 million in federal funding.  But if the Reform Party and its quixotic leaders are crazy, self-destructive,or divided to nominate him,  McCain should go his own way.   He could easily qualify to get on the ballot by petition on his own in all 50 states.  Money would be no problem. 

Most polls would soon put him in first place with Gore and Bush trailing behind (just as Perot enjoyed the lead for one month in 1992).  Bolstered by the excitement his candidacy would generate, McCain can raise all he needs through direct solicitation via mail and the Internet.  Indeed, with the two-party candidates bound by expenditure caps, and McCain freed of them, he might even out-spend his rivals.

John McCain should set his sights on history and redefine American politics forever.  It lies in his grasp.  He has the courage.  Will he seize his moment?

This column first appeared in the New York Post.