Edition: U.S. / Global  Liberties; McCain Picks Up the Mo in
Motown  Published: February 23, 2000  It is a campaign straight
out of Capra.  A decent guy takes on the System, and the brutes
who run the System move in to destroy the upstart. They paint
the populist hero as crazy or deceitful. After a bout of self-
pity, when he hates the whole rotten show, he rallies with some
sentimental hooey about American ideals and routs the ruling-
class bullies.  ''Why, your type's as old as history,'' John Doe
tells his tormentors. ''If you can't lay your dirty fingers on a
decent idea and twist it and squeeze it and stuff it into your
own pockets, you slap it down. Like dogs, if you can't eat
something, you bury it!''  Of course, like John McCain, the
Capra heroes battling Big Money could often get a little
insufferable. They could be sanctimonious and overemotional and
flaky. The idea of virtue triumphing over greed was always a
celluloid dream. But it seems even more far-fetched now, in a
society where greed is a virtu