What Has Doomed The McCain Campaign? The Wrong Strategy
Sigh…there are apparently a number of conservatives, both prominent and rank-and-file, who think that Americans right now are riveted by accusations of associations with anti-American radicals in Barack Obama’s past. Maybe this is so, and I’ve slipped off into some Bizarro alternate universe – but in the world that I’m living in, people are concerned about the economy, about their credit, about their mortgages, about their jobs, and about their future. I don’t see a lot of appetite for dwelling in the past.
So forgive me for banging my head against the wall at the latest attempts to wrap up all of Obama’s past associations, unsavory though they may be, in a nice little bow:
It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.
John McCain, take note. Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.
Let’s leave aside just how (ir)relevant this is to the issues confronting America for the moment, and provide a little context. The academic world is full of theories that would appall mainstream Americans if they knew more about them. Afrocentrism, like feminism and queer theory, is heavily anchored in revisionist views fostered by historic inequities…these approaches often play fast and loose with the facts in a no doubt sincere, but often misguided, attempt to minimize the role played by traditional power players (read: white males) and to play up the role of the historically oppressed. These theories often foster even greater class, gender, and racial resentments, but what looks like anti-Americanism to, presumably, most of you, and to me, would often be called an attempt to correct the record or to confront America’s flaws head-on by those who propound these theories.
In a nutshell: yes, the theories are tenuous at best, with little grounding in the rigor that forms the backbone of traditional disciplines, propounded by a group of academics that contains a higher share than normal of kooks and extremists, and full of resentment and hostility towards the traditional power structure of America and Europe. But there is nothing new about this, and in no way, shape, or form, is this the ‘October Surprise’ that those flogging these stories seem to think it is. We already knew about Obama’s associations with Wright and Ayers, and we know their views already. If Wright and Ayers have not harmed the Obama candidacy irreparably already, there is little reason to believe they will now.
However, by pursuing this angle relentlessly, McCain proponents are actually doing him a giant disservice, and to the extent McCain plays along, he is harming his prospects even further. There is ample evidence that the McCain camp is seen by a substantial part of the voting public as overly negative, and that this perception is harming McCain. McCain’s greatest strength has always been his character, and the tone of the campaign has sullied that reputation, much as the negativity of the Clintons harmed their public standing.
I understand that McCain is behind, and this strategy might be somewhat more understandable if it were having a positive impact in the polling, but that is clearly not the case. The McCain campaign was making real progress towards making the race competitive with the “Obama is the most famous guy on the planet, but is he ready to lead?” punchline…but the selection of Palin made that pitch untenable, and he has been flailing around helplessly ever since, with the exception of a brief bounce during the convention fueled, in large part, by Palin’s admittedly quite strong debut in her convention speech. But as Palin becomes more and more an object of ridicule rather than admiration, the former emphasis on experience that is now forgone is increasingly missed.
An even more important event has overtaken the campaigns, of course, and that is the credit crisis. Not in my lifetime have more people been more uneasy about the direction this country is taking than in these last few weeks. What is needed now, particularly from the Republican ticket, is a strong statement of belief in the resiliency of the market, a stirring defense of the incredible gains that have accrued worldwide as the ideas of free enterprise and capitalism have spread across the globe. The system as currently implemented had clearly allowed risky leveraging through massive debt and exotic derivatives to play too prominent a role, and obviously corrections, and some additional regulation are needed. But we need a champion of the markets now more than ever.
Those of us who revere the memory of President Reagan can only speculate as to how he would have handled the issue if he were alive today and campaigning, but I can state with 100% certainty that he would have delivered a rousing defense of the animating ideas of such stalwarts of free markets as the late, great Milton Friedman, and I also feel quite confident that his own innate optimism would have inspired Americans far more than the current hand wringing so in vogue.
McCain has, to his credit, made some attempts at such a response to the current crisis. His widely ridiculed statement that the fundamentals of the economy are strong was an inelegant attempt to show faith in the can-do spirit of the American worker, and he did emphasize on several occasions during the second debate that America is not going to be beaten by this current downturn, that we are bigger and better than that.
This message, though, essential as it is, has been made ineffective by McCain’s inconsistency, praising the market on one hand, while slapping at the ‘greed’ of modern Wall Street with the other. Further, his policy prescriptions for what ails us do not show a faith in the market. To give one example, his proposal for a systemic renegotiation of mortgage principal would be enormously expensive and probably unworkable, and a massive government intervention in marketplaces when we are already swimming in such interventions.
The emphasis on Ayers, Wright, and other issues related to Obama’s past has further detracted from the economic message, and it is the economy that is the overwhelming issue of the day. Those who criticize McCain as weak for not bringing up Ayers more show a fundamental misunderstanding of the man, and of the moment. Now is not the time for negativity and dwelling on the past – now is the time for a positive vision of America’s future. And right now, Barack Obama is doing a better job of meeting that objective.
It may be too late already to turn it around…but there is certainly no tomorrow. If McCain’s message remains a negative one, he will lose by a landslide…
UPDATE 11:23 p.m.: Jay Cost has a piece showing how badly the McCain camp has been hurt by its forced abandonment of the experience issue with the Palin pick:
…[M]ost of the public polls give a sense of how the country views the candidates, and these show Obama doing very well. An overview:
-Hotline/Diageo has shown McCain’s advantage on “who’s most prepared to lead” vary between 3 and 8 points this week. On a question so crucial to the central logic of the McCain candidacy, this is no advantage at all. -ABC News/WaPo shows that Obama has a +14 advantage over McCain on who’s the “stronger leader.” Obama has a +3 advantage on who would better handle an “unexpected major crisis.”
-Fox asks an interesting question. If you had to make the “toughest decision” in your life, who would you go to? A month ago, McCain had a 16-point advantage. Now, it’s -1. Fox also shows Obama with a +7 advantage on who has “better judgment.”
These numbers are horrible for McCain. All of them speak to core qualities we expect a President to possess – not to mention the central premises of the McCain candidacy. Strong leader, able to handle a major crisis, somebody you’d go to for the toughest decision in your life because you know he has good judgment. Right now, that man is Barack Obama – not John McCain. This is a clear indication to me that, as of today, the country is comfortable with the idea of Obama as President. If it remains comfortable with that idea come Election Day, he will win.
I think you hit pretty close to the mark here, Mark, but you seem to imply that there was some magical strategy with which McCain could have won this. He was fighting an uphill battle from the start, against some major structural deficits. A very, very unpopular incumbent President of his own party, and a candidate running an extraordinarily disciplined campaign are just two of them, but two of the biggest. Beside those, a shift in strategy may have narrowed the gap, but I’m not at all convinced that’s all it would have taken to reverse it.
I am sorry but that would not work. The people despise the markets right now.
It is an Alf Landon argument.
What I think might work is the opening Obama just made in response to a plumber where he said that Obama would take money from him in the name of “fairness”. I think a lot of people would think:
“Obama thinks plumbers make too much money. No plumber is rich, he is going to raise my taxes too.”
The problem is that Obama lies so sincerely on the no tax increase if you make less than 250,000 issue, he may be able to finesse this. To me, it was very revealing as to his true motives but I have known all along he is lying [See Clinton "middle class" tax cut]
What we really need is a foreign policy crisis. Too bad our enemies prefer a weak Obama. [A mistake in my view, contra conventional wisdom, Obama will need to use force to prove his toughness--look at his chest beating over Pakistan. McCain, like Nixon, is considered so eager to use force that he won't have to do so.]
As for Palin, you are wrong there too. She is the only thing holding GOP voters to him. The credit crisis would have hammered him even further without her.
You’re actually wishing for a foreign policy crisis? What kind: a terrorist attack on US soil? a North Korean nuclear weapon? …
Talk about putting partisan politics before country!
And, therein, lies the greatest silver lining in the Palin nomination: the final and utter discrediting of the “Rove doctrine”, that electoral success depends on turning out the party base.
Palin excites the base, but she is (according to all of the polls) a disaster with independents and with Hillary voters. Which is to say, with the only people whose votes might possibly have turned the election for McCain.
It used to be that, after the Primaries were over, both parties would tack towards the political center. Nowadays, at Rove’s inspiration, the Republicans lurch rightward during the General Election. That has (for peculiar reasons) worked well in the past two election cycles. However, the sooner that’s shown to have been a historical fluke, the better it will be for the country.
Short of digging up a video of Obama torturing puppies over at Michael Vick’s place, I’m not sure what McCain can do to turn things around. However, I think it’s fair to say that most (if not all) of McCain’s wounds were self-inflicted. The race was more or less even when the conventions ended, so I think that you could draw a straight line between McCain’s drop in the polls and his actions and campaign tactics since then.
On a different note: ever since Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the Decision08 editorial congratulating him on his achievement. Which will come first: the laudatory piece in Decision08 or Dow 14,000?
Not since Al Gore lost to George Bush has the most qualified candidate so thoroughly squandered what should have been a hard earned and deserved advantage in a Presidential election.
The McCain campaign is the perfect example of why I, a lifelong conservative (don’t confuse that with Republican), believe he is the most qualified candidate in terms of his character and qualifications but find that I cannot vote for him because his judgment is so clearly lacking.
P.S. Who has ever questioned Krugman’s economic credentials? If I recall, Mark has recently, and notably, sided with him on the whole bailout fiasco. Now, if we want to talk about that which Krugman has no credibility we will focus on the subject of his semi- (or is it thrice) weekly NY Times column.
So Krugman has unquestioned economic credentials except when he writes about economic matters for the Times?
Peter, events overtook Krugman – I meant to blog on his Nobel (and perhaps still will), but that was the day the Dow rose over 900, which was, of course, much more noteworthy – except (damn it!) we gave it all back today, practically…
Fargus, agreed – I’m not saying McCain would have won with a different strategy, but he wouldn’t have been so out of it that he was written off several weeks before the election. This election cycle, given all the factors, is almost a lock for the Democratic candidate. It would have taken a bad campaign from Obama or a stellar campaign from McCain to overcome those dynamics, and of course, we have seen neither…
Bob, I know you and I have not seen eye-to-eye much lately, but I appreciate you staying around and contributing to the conversation. Let be clear about Palin – I LIKE her. I think she shows a lot of spunk, she’s a little flirty, she’s cute, she’s gutsy, she can give a hell of a speech, as we saw at the convention – I just don’t think she’s ready for primetime yet, so to speak. If she is really serious about national office, assuming McCain loses, she needs to be bone up on the issues so that her debates and interviews can match her canned speeches…
Um, no, he’s an expert in the science of economics, of that there is no doubt, regardless of where he publishes his findings. He has great credibility when he speaks about economic matters. On anything else, i.e.; public policy, politics, etc., he’s no different than you and me: just another guy with an opinion.
Spare me the outrage. How many Dems are secretly happy about the credit crisis and its effect on the electoral chances of Dems? Plenty.
Not all crisis, btw, involve grave risk to Americans.
Zero.
No one wished for this mess. No one thinks it’s, to use your phrase, “what we need.” And no one takes satisfaction in the pain of millions of Americans who have lost (or will lose) their jobs, their homes, or their nest-eggs as a consequence of it.
Moreover, as I have expressed several time right here on this blog, I find it a matter of great disappointment, not satisfaction, that the McCain has been so incoherent, unsatisfactory and, frankly, oblivious in his response to the crisis. We deserve better from those who aspire to the job of President.
So … what manner of “foreign policy crisis” do you think “we need”?
Were you born yesterday? You cannot be that naive.
If you don’t think David Axelrod, for instance, does not love it, I have some beachfront land in Nevada for you.
I’m sorry. That’s nuts.
If you choose to believe that your political opponents hate this country, and “love it” when millions are suffering, that’s your business. But I’m not playing along.
This is no different than accusing George Bush of lying – you don’t know what others are thinking. I don’t understand why some among us choose to assume the worst of their political opponents rather than give them the benefit of the doubt by believing they, like us, want the best for our country.