There’s an interesting, and long, profile of John McCain’s campaign in this week’s New York Times Magazine. One part of it describes how Steve Schmidt convinced John McCain to talk about his time as a POW. I think it probably helped McCain a great deal in the Republican primaries. But the cost was that, by the summer, people had heard him talk about his time as a prisoner of war so much that they just began to roll their eyes whenever he brought it up. I’m not sure when the McCain camp realized this, but after their convention they pretty much dropped the POW talk from his campaign rhetoric. Whenever he does still mention it, as in one of the debates, the audience is unimpressed.
I don’t find McCain’s use of his time as a POW to be as cheap, tawdry, and exploitative as Rudy Guiliani’s use of 9/11, but the effect over time is the same. People stop listening and the candidate becomes a parody of himself.
If I can think of one thing that I would have done differently as a McCain strategist, it’s that I would have tacked all the way to the center-left after wrapping up the nomination, and run extremely hard against the Bush administration and the fire-breathers in the Republican Party. It would have really caused a blood-bath among the GOP delegates but, if McCain was right about one thing in this campaign, it was the need to throw a successful Hail Mary pass.
McCain and Lieberman were the preferred running-mates of the last two Democratic nominees. They had bipartisan, moderate, bona fides, and they should have exploited them and run as a centrist alternative to the nutso DeLay-Rove-Santorum wing of the party. Running to the right allowed Obama to easily capture the center. And, by not running aggressively away from a party and a president that is in total disrepute, McCain tied himself to a sinking ship.
I always thought his best choice for running mate would have been Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison would have been a decent choice, as well. Or, even Joe Lieberman. If Arlen Specter didn’t have health issues, he would have been a fine choice. Or Tom Ridge, Christie Whitman, or George Pataki. McCain needed someone that could sell him as a different kind of Republican. But he chose to go for a base election in a Democratic year. It was a terrible choice. Choosing Palin wasn’t the half of it. Any conservative would have helped drive him under.
I think McCain was given an ultimatum to choose a fundie or else.
well done!
hey boo- have you seen the latest AP Poll?
But without fealty to the religious right, no Republican presidential candidate anywhere is even going to get out of the gate. Their campaign would be dead before it started. He did the only thing he could do given the makeup and state of his today’s GOP.
I think everyone this side of the Kool-Aid punchbowl will agree that McCain would be much better off today with Olympia Snowe, Kay Bailey Hutchison, or Christie Whitman. Of course, it would have made for a GOP internal bloodbath, as you’ve said. However, after 12-16 years of Obama-Biden, I expect one of those three (or someone of similar ilk) will be our first woman president. Think of it as the second coming of Eisenhower in the middle of a progressive generational arc. Over a decade in the desert will do wonders for returning the GOP to the normal political party they were 50 years ago, as the extremists crawl back under their rocks and eventually wither away.
How soon do you think Rush Limbaugh will decide to take his cash and retire? Or will we have a return of the equal time on air policies and have his sponsors send him the way of Fr. Coughlin?
Nominating McCain was the first wrong choice.
With Palin’s drag on the ticket we should see Bush jumping out of the shrubs any minute to start campaigning for McCain. There’s just nowhere for this band of thieves to go but back to the well.
Obama was able to tack to the centre because disaffected progressives and Clitonites ultimately had nowhere else to go and have gradually, albeit reluctantly, come home. Had McCain chosen (say) Liebermann, he could have staked out the centre ground and made his attack on Obama as a leftist extremist of dubious experience a lot more credible. His base might not have been happy, but ultimately, when faced with the prospect of a black muslim President, would have had no choice but to come home to him as well.
McCain could have portrayed himself as a true centrist crossing the Aisle independent with nothing to do with the Partisan politics of the past decade. Once he picked Palin all that went out the window. It was the most important strategic mistake of the campaign by either candidate. Even the economy might not have been able to force a win for Obama against McCain/Lieberman running a positive campaign. It would, at least, have been a lot tightter.
You assume McCain would have run a “positive camapign” had someone else been chosen. Let me disabuse you of that notion. Lieberman would have n=been just as much the attack dog as Palin has proven to be, just not as big a draw on the campaign trail. McCain decided to run a negative campaign a long time ago when he selected a Rove protege to run his campaign. At that point there was no going back.
Damn typos.
Arguably selecting a Rove protege and selecting Palin were part of the same strategic blunder – going right instead of tacking for the centre. With Lieberman he had the option of running a positive or negative campaign, but either way, attacks on Obama as being an inexperienced, liberal partisan would have had a lot more credibility and wouldn’t have had to go down the “muslim” road – attacks which ultimately forced even Powell to endorse Obama.
There’s a difference between a negative campaign and a roll blatantly in the muck with the racists and the belligerent assholes campaign. I have no doubt that had McCain picked someone other than Palin, he still would have had to run a “negative” campaign – George W Bush really hasn’t given him much choice as far as that goes.
But. Had he picked someone who had been on the national political scene for a while and had made a name for themselves, he could have stayed above the smears himself. Because he wouldn’t have neutralized his one real line of attack against Obama – the experience argument. Imagine he’d put Romney or Huckabee or even Lieberman into the role that Palin is standing in right now – they could be attacking Obama daily on his lack of experience. They could be campaigning in tandem all over the country talking about it. And they could have left the racist smear jobs as the “whisper campaign” where those things work best – sunlight makes crap like that fail.
He still probably wouldn’t be winning right now, but that 10 point gap in the national polls would be a lot smaller.
Couldn’t agree more
McCain’s last decent chance to save his campaign was to come out against the Wall Street bailout, but he didn’t have the courage to take it.
I was half way thru a diary on this. Glad you posted on the article.(Btw it’s also in the International Herald Tribune)
Couldn’t be worse timing:
The making (and remaking and remaking) of McCain
this choice morsel on the Palin pick had my eyes pop – less than a four days before Palin was introduced to the country;
Clueless. They knew the Palin pick was stepping on their best message line and they went ahead anyway.
McCain’s selection of his campaign staff and the Davis line “You never know where his head is” should be a disqualifier for his candidacy.
Heard from friend in Texass today…
“I just got an email from my sister. Four friends of hers went to vote early in Austin, TX. In their early vote system, voters receive a confirmation print out of their vote. In each of those four cases, the voters voted a straight Democratic ticket. But their printouts said they had voted for McCain/Palin.
Each of them made a big stink about it. Had their votes nullified and re-voted with the vote being correctly tabulated this time. All four are so angry that they’re going to the media about it. They’re also reporting the problem to the voting commissioner’s office as well as to the Obama campaign.
I realize Texas will undoubtedly go to McCain, but it hints at some dark things to come on election day.”
It is difficult to imagine a worse choice than Palin. She is shallower than a bird bath at the end of a hot day, and that’s one of her best points.
I think McCain was afraid of picking anyone from the Northeast. Also, I don’t think that many of the strongest choices wanted to chance being unsuccessful. McCain is a sacrificial choice of the GOP. Of course they’ll take a miracle win but if he looses it will mean minimal damage( except in the Congress where it could be disaster).