WALLACE: I want to get to some of those issues in just a second, but let me just ask you sort of the next question, which is if you don't reach agreement, does the majority leader, Bill Frist, have the 50 Republican votes he needs, plus the tiebreaker from Vice President Cheney to, in fact, impose the nuclear option?

MCCAIN: I don't know the answer to that because there's several Senators who have not indicated exactly how they're going to vote.

So I don't know.

. . . WALLACE: But in other words, there would be a provision that would allow the defeat of at least several of these nominees?

MCCAIN: No, it would mean that there would be a commitment to let most of them go under any circumstances, and then there would only be a couple of others that would then be a decision made as to whether they would continue to filibuster those or not.

It's very possible that there would be a vote on all of them. It's also possible that one or more of them would not reach the Senate floor because of other difficulties that their nomination faces.

Look, we're talking about changing the rules of the Senate with 51 votes, which has never happened in the history of the United States Senate. The Democrats have tried to change the rules when they were in the majority. They tried to get a two-thirds vote.

If you have 51 votes, changing the rules of the Senate, nominations of the president is next, and then legislation follows that. And we will now become an institution exactly like the House of Representatives. That's not what our founding fathers envisioned when they created a bicameral legislature.

. . . WALLACE: But I guess what I'm asking is: What is the impact do you think it would be on the institution if while you're involved in this food fight up here on Capitol Hill, an awful lot of the people's business isn't getting done?

MCCAIN: I think it would be, again, very bad. I note that polling numbers and approval for Congress is down to where it was in 1994.

I think we have, unfortunately, a tendency to forget that we're in a war. Young Americans are dying every day. We have the threat of Al Qaeda and the war on terrorism. We have an unprotected border. We have Social Security, not to mention a burgeoning deficit.

Understandably, to me, the American people's priorities are not those being displayed by the Congress today, particularly in the United States Senate.

The level of rhetoric has reached a point that's really not helpful to the institution or to the individuals who are part of it.