In fairness, I should note that the migration of political opinions is not unusual or specific to Republicans. For example, Democrats Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton earlier in their political careers espoused a more pro-life point of view on the issue of abortion. In particular, since the most motivated primary voters are liberal/progressive for the Democrats and conservative for the Republicans, the conventional playbook over the past several elections has been for the eventual nominee to play to the partisan base during the primary campaign and then attempt to move to the center during the general election campaign. Both Kerry and Obama ran up highly progressive Senate voting records during the months preceding their nominations and other Senate Presidential hopefuls (Evan Bayh, Hillary Clinton, and others) also voted more consistently progressive.
To a limited extent, John McCain did a similar thing, emphasizing to the base his solid support of Bush's 2007 agenda and toning down some of his more maverick positions, e.g., supporting to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, putting border security first in immigration reform, willingness to consider oil and gas exploration offshore, and rejecting attempts to impose more restrictions on CIA interrogation techniques.
Escaping the Shadow of an Unpopular President
The Disastrous Selection of Palin
Sixth, McCain did a poor job of distinguishing his populist versus Obama's progressive politics. It was particularly bad at one point when the Obama campaign accused the McCain campaign of stealing from its playbook. Obama and McCain had similar positions on middle-class taxes, on a ban on ANWR oil and gas drilling, in favor of embryonic stem cell research, against a more restricted version of waterboarding as "torture", for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and (in principle) cap-and-trade and immigration reform. McCain was never going to attract the votes of ideological progressives; he needed to provide a fresh, sharp contrast with Obama and (whenever possible) with Bush himself. That's what made McCain's botched approach to the economic tsunami so baffling (see discussion below).
Escaping the Shadow of an Unpopular President
I really thought the fall campaign would play out differently than it did. I did, of course, realize that McCain had a tough hand to play; Bush for the most part seemed resigned to his falling approval ratings, stubbornly secure in his belief that he had made the right decisions based on principle, even if it cost him in terms of personal popularity. John McCain was put in an awkward position, a double-edged sword, because he couldn't let Obama's charges of McCain's being the third term of a President with a 30% approval rating go unanswered, but any attack on Bush could backfire on his base, solidly behind the President, and raise credibility problems because McCain had gone out of his way to point out to the base during the Republican campaign the fact he had voted with Bush 90% of the time the prior year.
[I feel perhaps the best response under the circumstances would have been for McCain to argue that whereas Bush was right on matters of political principle, he had done a poor job implementing policy, building his team, holding them accountable in a timely fashion, and reinventing his prior bipartisan approach with the Texas legislature in the context of Washington DC. McCain would be a more proactive President, hire better people (but keep them on a shorter leash), and would bring the existing proven bipartisan relationships from 26 years in Washington to build national consensus.]
The Disastrous Selection of Palin
There were other problems with the campaign, although I think McCain did as well as any other Republican candidate would have been able to achieve under the circumstance. The first was the selection of Sarah Palin. Originally I myself was shocked by the selection, mostly because at the time she had the matter of Troopergate hanging over her head, and the last thing the campaign needed was any negative development occurring during the final weeks leading up to the election. Sarah Palin gave two brilliantly well-executed and well-received public speeches, and the Obama campaign, which had badly misfired on the selection of Joe Biden, overplayed their initial reaction. McCain had regained the lead in the polls heading into--the economic tsunami.
But here's the point: you have to do a risk analysis before the VP selection; you have a 2-year governor, no federal experience, being a heartbeat from the Presidency of a senior citizen. Keep in mind John McCain had been selling himself as the man of experience to Obama's inexperience. Yet we're supposed to believe that the man who insisted experience was the reason to elect him President was picking an inexperienced person as his own running mate. To most people, that came across as paradoxical, self-contradictory or hypocritical. I don't necessarily believe that limited experience is a disqualification, but I think that you have to make the case that someone has compensating intelligence (e.g., a quick study) or comparable qualifications (e.g., a CEO of an international corporation or chairman of a joint chiefs of staff). John McCain never gave a satisfactory response, and the burden of proof was on him to make the case. And Palin's performance in national interviews was pathetic; it wasn't the fault of the McCain staff, it wasn't the media--it was the failure of Palin herself.
Whereas Palin's road to the becoming the governor (defeating the incumbent in a primary and then a former Democratic governor) was remarkable, Alaska is a state with a light population (less than 1% of the US population) and vast natural resources with no state income tax and, in fact, an annual distribution to residents. John McCain's two primary season opponents, former full-term governors Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, had to deal with heavily Democratic legislatures. Mitt Romney also had years of business executive experience and played a high-profile role in the successful Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Both of these candidates had been well-vetted over months of a long campaign. Other potential VP candidates (e.g., Kay Bailey Hutchinson) had significant Washington experience. Even if McCain has to accept responsibility for making the decision, it fell on the campaign management to tell McCain what he didn't want to hear. The nomination initially worked--but when the campaign procrastinated on making Palin available to the media, I knew instinctively that there was a problem.
Whereas Palin's road to the becoming the governor (defeating the incumbent in a primary and then a former Democratic governor) was remarkable, Alaska is a state with a light population (less than 1% of the US population) and vast natural resources with no state income tax and, in fact, an annual distribution to residents. John McCain's two primary season opponents, former full-term governors Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, had to deal with heavily Democratic legislatures. Mitt Romney also had years of business executive experience and played a high-profile role in the successful Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Both of these candidates had been well-vetted over months of a long campaign. Other potential VP candidates (e.g., Kay Bailey Hutchinson) had significant Washington experience. Even if McCain has to accept responsibility for making the decision, it fell on the campaign management to tell McCain what he didn't want to hear. The nomination initially worked--but when the campaign procrastinated on making Palin available to the media, I knew instinctively that there was a problem.
The selection of Palin wasn't based primarily on her being a woman (McCain saw her as a fellow reformer, a kindred spirit), although it is clear that Obama's VP pick snub of Hillary Clinton, whom barely lost to Obama, mostly because of her poor organization and performance in caucus states, had provided McCain with a wide court to return serve, and from a tactical, short-term standpoint, McCain's choice was brilliant--McCain showed in a single stroke this was not your grandfather's GOP and deftly contrasted himself from both Bush and Obama whom had chosen long-time Washington insiders.
Palin, in fact, became an accidental right-wing icon. She had achieved a sky-high approval rating prior to Troopergate, largely based on a bipartisan reform agenda. Palin had pushed for windfall tax increase on energy companies, boosted alternative energy subsidies and got her fair share of federal earmarks as mayor and governor--hardly the record of a principled conservative.
Palin, in fact, became an accidental right-wing icon. She had achieved a sky-high approval rating prior to Troopergate, largely based on a bipartisan reform agenda. Palin had pushed for windfall tax increase on energy companies, boosted alternative energy subsidies and got her fair share of federal earmarks as mayor and governor--hardly the record of a principled conservative.
Colin Powell had suggested misgivings of McCain's judgment in picking Palin was a key factor in his endorsing Obama. I'm not exactly sure how Obama's picking a 6-term white male US Senator as VP over his chief rival, the first credible female Presidential candidate in US history, showed better judgment. But I don't think that McCain ever had a clue that Palin would stumble so badly in her interviews; she had held her own on the road to the governor's mansion. I think the McCain campaign staff simply hadn't done due diligence.
A Matter of Timing
In a fair, just world, Obama and his competition for the Democratic nomination should have paid a steep price for being wrong on Bush's belated surge strategy, which finally stabilized Iraq (from a comparative standpoint), and McCain should have scored for being prescient in calling as early as 2003 for more troops, against the judgment of Bush and the Pentagon brass. McCain never got a lot of traction from the issue, because his rivals for the nomination supported the surge strategy and by the time of the election, Bush and the Iraq government were already negotiating a withdrawal schedule, providing the Democrats a degree of political cover from their irresponsible unilateral withdrawal proposals at the beginning of 2007. Furthermore, although the success of the Petraeus counter-insurgency strategy did stop the political bleeding over the Iraq occupation, Bush never really managed to convince the American people that our troubled involvement in Iraq had been worth the steep cost in American blood and treasury. I also think that independents and moderates were holding the GOP responsible for not pushing Bush and the Pentagon earlier for a more successful military strategy (i.e., "too little, too late") and for well-documented administration missteps in the occupation. I also think John McCain would have been well-served to have addressed lessons learned from the Iraq experience, including reservations over future nation-building efforts.
The selection of a running mate from a leading oil-and-gas producing state also may have been more of a plus if high energy prices had been persisted to election day, but energy prices corrected after the economic tsunami. McCain, who openly admitted the economy wasn't his strong suit, should have considered a candidate whom would have better balanced the ticket, e.g., Mitt Romney or Kay Bailey Hutchinson (with a banking background).
Strategic and Tactical Errors Against Obama
As talented a politician McCain is, with continuous Congressional service since 1982 and an improbable come-from-behind victory for the GOP nomination last year, McCain made some tactical and strategic blunders against Obama. The first one of note occurred before the Republican claim when McCain, with trademark candor, made a critical unforced error by admitting his lack of expertise on economics (after voting on domestic issues in Congress for over 20 years). Perhaps if McCain was running while the memories of 9/11 were still fresh, his strong credentials in military and foreign policy issues would have made more of a difference, but in the aftermath of an economic tsunami, the economy would be a major factor, which McCain had already conceded wasn't his strong suit.
Second, McCain did a very poor job of responding to Obama's attempts to define him, e.g., as a Bush clone, as an ideological deregulator, as an insider and/or tool of "special interests" in the highly partisan politics over his 26 years in Washington, etc.
Third, the McCain campaign failed to respond appropriately to critical events, the most prominent being Obama's decision not to abide by federal campaign financing restrictions, a broken campaign promise (there was also McCain's unforced decision to suspend his campaign). Perhaps the McCain campaign wasn't confident it could raise more than the federal election funds for the general campaign; the campaign simply couldn't compete with Obama's overwhelming funding.
Fourth, the McCain campaign and debate performances were entirely too predictable and underestimated Obama's ability to overcome his abstract, long-winded performances apparent during the early Democratic nomination campaign. McCain's positions on social security reform and providing equal protection tax savings on healthcare insurance were too similar to Bush's positions, reinforcing Obama's misleading allegation over McCain being an extension of Bush policies.
Fifth, the McCain campaign seemed to be caught flat-footed by Obama's determination to meet and beat tax cuts and failed to adequately address the unrealistic assumptions of "soak the rich" by the "ideal" Clinton high tax bracket standard to raise compensatory revenues, never mind the negative effect on business growth (not to mention increasing the bureaucratic costs of doing business by undue regulation and maintaining uncompetitive high business income tax brackets). The fact is, the campaign did not invent Joe the Plumber; Joe the Plumber on his own did better than all the high-paid McCain consultants in fleshing out Obama's underlying socialist principles. [After all the time Obama was constantly harping about tax cuts to 95% of working Americans when nearly 40% of working Americans pay no federal income tax; the McCain campaign was slow to the draw in questioning how workers not paying income taxes get a tax cut.] I was waiting for the McCain campaign, which expertly mocked the "we are the ones we've been waiting for" persona, to come up with a "smoke-and-mirrors", Wizard-of-Oz ("pay no attention to the man behind the curtain") analogy ("Tax, and spend, and regulate! Oh, my! Follow the deficit-paved road!") to how Obama could promise both lower taxes and high government spending without snuffing out the pilot light under the American economy with massive deficits, interest payments crowding out necessary government spending, and recession-causing inflation. In fact, McCain could have used Obama's promises to launch a series of "straight talk" spots, noting promises voters couldn't "believe in", given reduced federal revenues during the recession.
Whereas media conservatives loved Palin's stick-on-message, repetitive spin-bites during the VP debate, ignoring moderator's questions and Biden's allegations regarding McCain's views on regulation and health care, I was appalled, although I should not have been surprised. An admiring Joe Millman said this about Palin's gubernatorial debates:
In most encounters, her métier was projecting winsomeness -- making a virtue of not knowing as much about the minutiae of state government because, for most of her adulthood, she was immersed in small-town life and raising a family...The other candidates scowled and sighed over her inability, in one exchange, to identify a single bill passed by the legislature that she either approved or disapproved of...Larry Persily, the Anchorage Daily News editor [recalls],"...With Andrew, she was saying, basically, 'Gee, all your facts and numbers are nice, but the voters just don't care.'"
Yes, indeed: the McCain campaign did their due diligence in vetting Sarah Palin; imagine their surprise when Sarah Palin in national interviews had trouble identifying Supreme Court decisions or coming up the names of newspapers and magazines she reads. Go figure.
A Matter of Timing
In a fair, just world, Obama and his competition for the Democratic nomination should have paid a steep price for being wrong on Bush's belated surge strategy, which finally stabilized Iraq (from a comparative standpoint), and McCain should have scored for being prescient in calling as early as 2003 for more troops, against the judgment of Bush and the Pentagon brass. McCain never got a lot of traction from the issue, because his rivals for the nomination supported the surge strategy and by the time of the election, Bush and the Iraq government were already negotiating a withdrawal schedule, providing the Democrats a degree of political cover from their irresponsible unilateral withdrawal proposals at the beginning of 2007. Furthermore, although the success of the Petraeus counter-insurgency strategy did stop the political bleeding over the Iraq occupation, Bush never really managed to convince the American people that our troubled involvement in Iraq had been worth the steep cost in American blood and treasury. I also think that independents and moderates were holding the GOP responsible for not pushing Bush and the Pentagon earlier for a more successful military strategy (i.e., "too little, too late") and for well-documented administration missteps in the occupation. I also think John McCain would have been well-served to have addressed lessons learned from the Iraq experience, including reservations over future nation-building efforts.
The selection of a running mate from a leading oil-and-gas producing state also may have been more of a plus if high energy prices had been persisted to election day, but energy prices corrected after the economic tsunami. McCain, who openly admitted the economy wasn't his strong suit, should have considered a candidate whom would have better balanced the ticket, e.g., Mitt Romney or Kay Bailey Hutchinson (with a banking background).
Strategic and Tactical Errors Against Obama
As talented a politician McCain is, with continuous Congressional service since 1982 and an improbable come-from-behind victory for the GOP nomination last year, McCain made some tactical and strategic blunders against Obama. The first one of note occurred before the Republican claim when McCain, with trademark candor, made a critical unforced error by admitting his lack of expertise on economics (after voting on domestic issues in Congress for over 20 years). Perhaps if McCain was running while the memories of 9/11 were still fresh, his strong credentials in military and foreign policy issues would have made more of a difference, but in the aftermath of an economic tsunami, the economy would be a major factor, which McCain had already conceded wasn't his strong suit.
Second, McCain did a very poor job of responding to Obama's attempts to define him, e.g., as a Bush clone, as an ideological deregulator, as an insider and/or tool of "special interests" in the highly partisan politics over his 26 years in Washington, etc.
Third, the McCain campaign failed to respond appropriately to critical events, the most prominent being Obama's decision not to abide by federal campaign financing restrictions, a broken campaign promise (there was also McCain's unforced decision to suspend his campaign). Perhaps the McCain campaign wasn't confident it could raise more than the federal election funds for the general campaign; the campaign simply couldn't compete with Obama's overwhelming funding.
Fourth, the McCain campaign and debate performances were entirely too predictable and underestimated Obama's ability to overcome his abstract, long-winded performances apparent during the early Democratic nomination campaign. McCain's positions on social security reform and providing equal protection tax savings on healthcare insurance were too similar to Bush's positions, reinforcing Obama's misleading allegation over McCain being an extension of Bush policies.
Fifth, the McCain campaign seemed to be caught flat-footed by Obama's determination to meet and beat tax cuts and failed to adequately address the unrealistic assumptions of "soak the rich" by the "ideal" Clinton high tax bracket standard to raise compensatory revenues, never mind the negative effect on business growth (not to mention increasing the bureaucratic costs of doing business by undue regulation and maintaining uncompetitive high business income tax brackets). The fact is, the campaign did not invent Joe the Plumber; Joe the Plumber on his own did better than all the high-paid McCain consultants in fleshing out Obama's underlying socialist principles. [After all the time Obama was constantly harping about tax cuts to 95% of working Americans when nearly 40% of working Americans pay no federal income tax; the McCain campaign was slow to the draw in questioning how workers not paying income taxes get a tax cut.] I was waiting for the McCain campaign, which expertly mocked the "we are the ones we've been waiting for" persona, to come up with a "smoke-and-mirrors", Wizard-of-Oz ("pay no attention to the man behind the curtain") analogy ("Tax, and spend, and regulate! Oh, my! Follow the deficit-paved road!") to how Obama could promise both lower taxes and high government spending without snuffing out the pilot light under the American economy with massive deficits, interest payments crowding out necessary government spending, and recession-causing inflation. In fact, McCain could have used Obama's promises to launch a series of "straight talk" spots, noting promises voters couldn't "believe in", given reduced federal revenues during the recession.
Sixth, McCain did a poor job of distinguishing his populist versus Obama's progressive politics. It was particularly bad at one point when the Obama campaign accused the McCain campaign of stealing from its playbook. Obama and McCain had similar positions on middle-class taxes, on a ban on ANWR oil and gas drilling, in favor of embryonic stem cell research, against a more restricted version of waterboarding as "torture", for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and (in principle) cap-and-trade and immigration reform. McCain was never going to attract the votes of ideological progressives; he needed to provide a fresh, sharp contrast with Obama and (whenever possible) with Bush himself. That's what made McCain's botched approach to the economic tsunami so baffling (see discussion below).
Seventh, the Republican campaign, although with a few well-produced spots, was behind the curve in organization, fund-raising and utilization of new media. It did a poor job of dealing with college students (given the fact that high business taxes affected their professional future and they would be paying off unfunded mandates and huge federal deficits) and ethnic groups. It did not respond effectively to Obama's middle-class tax proposals or misleading characterizations of McCain's equal protection tax-advantaged health care plan. It focused too much on black-and-white videos of McCain's POW/war hero past (which, if anything, reminded voters of McCain's age) and not enough on his proven track record of bipartisanship in the House and Senate.
Finally, the negative campaign style during the homestretch, including the robo-calls and in particular the emphasis on Bill Ayers, turned off a number of independents and moderates and came across as desperate. I think that McCain should have flipped Obama's abandoned non-partisan motivational campaign on its head; as long as McCain's age was already an issue, I would have done a series of reassuring Reaganite optimistic fireside chats, noting the resiliency of the American economy and the American people, and enduring American values of self-reliance and hard work, echoing Francis Scott Key's celebratory observation at dawn, after a bleak night of an intense British assault, that "our flag was still there". What we needed was not "more of the same" failed progressive attempts to "tax, spend, and regulate" and grow government overhead, market share of the GDP, but to right-size government: smarter, more efficient government, not a scaled-up version of inefficient government. What we needed to do was to get back to the basics of American life and values: living within our means and long-term goals (not get-rich-quick schemes like condo flipping), saving our money towards college, retirement, appliances, cars, and homes (not home ownership without a down payment or evidence of steady, sufficient income) and an obsession with the next quarterly earnings reports.
The issue was not change, but the right kind of change: a change to living within our means and not passing the buck to subsequent generations. Why in the world is it right for private companies to have to lay off workers or cut salaries, hours and benefits to live within their means, but the federal government doesn't do the same and in fact bails out irresponsible state governments failing to have established rainy day funds, issued gold-plated benefits (over and beyond comparable packages in the private sector) and other unfunded mandates, and not wanting to make unpopular budget cuts because they ran up the cost of government (for the sake of their own political ambitions) to an unsustainable level?
In fact, as McCain might have pointed out, "haste makes waste"; the last thing we could afford was the WRONG TYPE OF CHANGE, "change we can't afford"--like pushing in crisis mode a largely deferred spending "stimulus" bill that, among other things, allowed states time to put off making necessary, hard decisions another year or tackling issues of climate change and a phony health care insurance crisis by raising taxes (directly or indirectly through regulations and penalties) in the middle of the most serious recession since the Great Depression. Why would you essentially give a blank check to a Democratic-controlled Congress, which has never balanced a budget in decades, and make a rookie Senator, with no proven administrative experience, President?
Yes, I realize that negative ads are run because they work, and negative campaigning is not a late-emerging phenomenon in the history of American politics. But I am baffled by McCain's decision to go after Bill Ayers instead of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Bill Ayers was never convicted of any terrorism charges, he had pursued an academic career over the past 3 decades, and his dealings with and influence on Obama were fairly minimal and hard to document. The Jeremiah Wright issue emerged during the Democratic primary season (just like the Willie Horton issue had been initially raised over two decades earlier by Democratic contender Al Gore, not G.H.W. Bush). Barack Obama's whole treatment of the Wright issue was suspect; he insists that he never knew about Wright's radical opinions in 20 years (even though Oprah Winfrey left the church because of them, the church published copies of Wright's sermons, Wright presided over the Obama wedding and baptisms of Obama and his children, and one of Obama's book titles ("The Audacity of Hope") was borrowed from one of Wright's favorite themes). Then even after the infamous clips were heavily replayed, Obama made an impassioned defense on behalf of Wright, suggesting Wright was no worse his own white maternal grandmother on race issues (after all, we don't expect a higher standard of behavior from clergymen, do we?)--but then threw Wright under the bus after Wright suggested that Obama was just another politician.
When you look back at the soap opera involving Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, is Obama's botched handling of health insurance reform that surprising to me? I really wasn't worried so much about whether Obama subscribed to Jeremiah Wright's radical point of view; I saw him more as Obama's Billy Carter. I think Obama viewed the Trinity church primarily as a politically useful link to black Chicago voters.
But Obama needed to provide an explanation of why he failed to speak out earlier, distancing himself from Wright's divisive rhetoric at the time it arose, not years later in the middle of a political campaign, and why a "crazy old uncle" saying "God damn America" can be forgiven, but Wright calling his "nephew" just another politician crossed over the line. Obama should have either cut Wright loose from the get-go or stayed behind him: once Obama cut loose his "crazy old uncle", the question was why it took so long.
I think McCain should have used the Jeremiah Wright issue--not by rehashing what was revealed 6 months earlier (because Obama had already announced his decision to leave the Trinity church by the fall campaign), but because if Obama was so conflicted in how to deal with his "loose cannon" former pastor, how was he going to deal in a timely fashion with rogue international despots like Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad, or Kim Jong-il?
McCain's Mishandling of the Economic Tsunami and the TARP Legislation
It would be difficult to think how an experienced politician like McCain could possibly have played this situation any worse than he did. It allowed Obama, Reid and other Democrats to engage in a subtle ageist dig at McCain for being "erratic". In a certain sense, this occasion demonstrates the comparable wisdom of Dole's approach in resigning his Senate seat to run his 1996 fall Presidential campaign.
McCain's Mishandling of the Economic Tsunami and the TARP Legislation
It would be difficult to think how an experienced politician like McCain could possibly have played this situation any worse than he did. It allowed Obama, Reid and other Democrats to engage in a subtle ageist dig at McCain for being "erratic". In a certain sense, this occasion demonstrates the comparable wisdom of Dole's approach in resigning his Senate seat to run his 1996 fall Presidential campaign.
I think if anyone was positioned to politically benefit from the tsunami, McCain was. The Democrats were in control of the Congress, and President Bush had to negotiate with them. The Democrats had run for years against Bush, and Obama's fate was linked with his Congressional leadership; Bush wasn't on the 2008 ballot, but the Democrats were, and inaction was not an option. This is not to say that TARP was popular with progressives, whom saw it as bailing out "greedy capitalists". (Never mind, of course, that Wall Street is regulated both at the federal and state levels, and many investors for years argued that the housing market had gotten ahead of itself.) Conservatives were rightly concerned by the nature and extent of the federal intervention.
McCain, instead of delegating a key supporter, like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, to represent him on the issue, contacted Obama about jointly suspending their campaigns, although it was not clear what they could bring to the situation, given the existing Democrat and Republican negotiators, working on the issue. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was clearly worried about the Republicans letting the Democrats do the heavy lifting on the bill and implored for McCain's help. Obama, who was clueless in what to do in an economic crisis, refused to suspend his campaign, and McCain unilaterally decided to postpone his campaign. Obama and Reid instantly read the situation: McCain wanted to use the situation to add another notch on his bipartisanship belt. The last thing Reid was going to do is give McCain ammunition to use against Obama during the campaign; so 24 hours after rejoicing over McCain's support for a bipartisan measure, feeling that McCain had given GOP senators political cover for a compromise, essentially co-opting the GOP so it couldn't blame the Democrats for the intervention, Reid publicly rebuked McCain, claiming McCain's presence was unnecessary. The Presidential debate committee refused to postpone the first debate (on the military and foreign policy, areas heavily favoring McCain), and Obama ludicrously taunted McCain of being afraid of debating him (when in fact Obama, sitting on a lead and a huge campaign chest advantage and realizing the risk of gaffes in debates, had insisted on fewer, not additional debates and had backed away from an earlier concept of a dozen or so joint townhall meetings with McCain).
McCain would later claim that the reason he suspended the campaign had more to do with the House Republicans rebelling; among other things, President Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had given short shrift to House Republican concerns. McCain had at least won from Bush a promise to call Obama to a joint meeting at the White House, an offer Obama couldn't refuse. According to news reports, Paulson was openly pandering for support with Obama and the Democratic leaders, and McCain mostly sat silent at the meeting (although seeming to imply his sympathies were with the House Republicans), while Obama rebuked him for not keeping the House Republicans in check.
In my view, McCain missed an obvious opportunity to publicly side with the House Republicans which perfectly played to his conservative, populist and reformist persona: public discontent with the massive, unprecedented federal intervention; any concessions in terms would be at the expense of Obama and Bush, in a stroke instantly nullifying the "Bush third term" argument.
Lessons for the 2012 Campaign
The following is an abridged list of some things I think the GOP needs to consider in taking back the White House in 2012. Obviously Obama's performance, including his missteps on the size and structuring of the stimulus package and health care reform, his pandering and incessant apologies to European socialists, his quantum leap forward in unaccountable czars, and in particular his political exploitation of the worst recession in decades to explode government growth, spending, meddling in the private sector and the overall twin (trade and federal operations) deficits, will be the major issue. But the GOP will need a candidate with the intellectual bandwidth to expose Obama doublespeak and surface-level smoke-and-mirrors masquerading as policy "substance".
First, the Republicans have to come up with a less predictable game plan. Issues like abortion, guns, and middle-class taxes are co-opted or become the object of progressive doublespeak (like Obama's disingenuous post hoc rationalizations of stonewalling the born alive infant protection act of Illinois and vague discussions of Second Amendment rights and flexibility on offshore drilling).
First, the Republicans have to come up with a less predictable game plan. Issues like abortion, guns, and middle-class taxes are co-opted or become the object of progressive doublespeak (like Obama's disingenuous post hoc rationalizations of stonewalling the born alive infant protection act of Illinois and vague discussions of Second Amendment rights and flexibility on offshore drilling).
Second, the Republicans need to come up with an improved political version of a full-court press. This includes leaving no political distortions unanswered. The idea of a quick-response team certainly isn't new, particularly coming into play during the 1992 Clinton campaign. The McCain campaign certainly had its moments; one of my favorite was when, with a growing dependence of America on foreign oil and gas supplies (over 20% of our out-of-balance imports), Obama suggested auto tune-ups and keeping tires inflated. The McCain team, inspired by Obama's faux pas, released a tire gauge imprinted with "Obama's Energy Plan". In particular, the public needs to be aware of Democratic low-balling expanded program costs and overestimating revenue collections (e.g., by surtaxes on job creators). But I'm going beyond things like unanswered ad distortions of McCain's health care plan; I'm also referring to situations like Florida, where McCain once held a significant lead over Obama, and the McCain campaign stood by while Obama's campaign saturated the airwaves with campaign ads with virtually no competitive McCain campaign response, resulting in Obama surging to the lead and an underfunded McCain campaign unable to come from behind by election day. Also, it's gotten to the point that whereas McCain and others promise a 50-state strategy, there effectively was no McCain campaign in Maryland. The Obama campaign had so much money, they were still pouring money in Maryland ads, which I saw on a daily basis, but almost no McCain ads (unless I was watching a national network program or Fox News). In fact, the Obama campaign could simply bluff an attempt to try to make a potentially embarrassing play for McCain's home state and keep the campaign on the defensive, other than making a desperation play for Pennsylvania. And there were too many joint appearances of McCain and Palin, which I think was unfortunate in terms of limiting local coverage of the campaign.
Another aspect of the full-court press is a more effective debate performance on both sides of the ticket. In terms of McCain's performance against Obama, there were points where, to borrow a tennis analogy, McCain rushed to the net, and Obama responded with rapid-fire passing shots, unanswered. To borrow a boxing analogy, there were times McCain had Obama on the ropes (e.g., the abortion discussion) and failed to put him away, and Obama was easily able to fend off McCain's weakly presented and clearly anticipated questioning of Obama's murky associations (e.g., Ayers). I don't know if McCain's performance was a result of overconfidence or inadequate debate preparation, but I myself anticipated what Obama was going to say in response, and McCain simply didn't follow up.
Another aspect of the full-court press is a more effective debate performance on both sides of the ticket. In terms of McCain's performance against Obama, there were points where, to borrow a tennis analogy, McCain rushed to the net, and Obama responded with rapid-fire passing shots, unanswered. To borrow a boxing analogy, there were times McCain had Obama on the ropes (e.g., the abortion discussion) and failed to put him away, and Obama was easily able to fend off McCain's weakly presented and clearly anticipated questioning of Obama's murky associations (e.g., Ayers). I don't know if McCain's performance was a result of overconfidence or inadequate debate preparation, but I myself anticipated what Obama was going to say in response, and McCain simply didn't follow up.
Third, the Republicans need to develop cohesive, more comprehensive, market-oriented programs to address issues like environmental care, health care, entitlements, and education. We need to go beyond small-step proposals, e.g., school vouchers and partial worker control over his social security contributions. To give a minor example of the kind of thing to which I'm referring, consider the poorly-designed Democratic "cash-for-clunkers" programs. Among other things, the program only covered vehicles starting with 1984 models. A number of regularly-driven clunkers or fuel-inefficient vehicles were not eligible for the program. I suspect the fact that the program was quickly oversubscribed reflected overly generous government subsidies and probably just borrowed sales from people already planning to purchase vehicles, without the tax gimmick, in subsequent months. But the real point is--the Democrats haven't really thought of applying a related idea at the power plant level. Instead of focusing on punishing your grandfather's production coal plant, why not provide tax incentives for utilities to replace them with newer, cleaner, more efficient coal plants or nuclear power plants based on thorium technology?
Fourth, the Republicans need to find inventive new ways of making the costs of Democratic overspending and regulations more relevant to young people. For example, to make a case for tax simplification, they could ask teenagers or college students to fill out typical household tax returns.
They could invent a game called "balance the national budget" where they are given a stack of phony money, where they have to pay more and more interest to creditors to cover past and present Democratic Party overspending, while game cards announcing new Democratic spending initiatives (funded by IOU's which young adult players must sign off on; all notes must be paid off at the end of the game), and chance cards reading things like "Recession causes federal revenues to decrease by 20%; advance to GO; collect 20% less. Cut spending now or put up American assets as collateral for a Chinese loan". Or "Obama takes a company on which you hold bonds into bankruptcy. He decides to give up assets serving as collateral for the loan to his union cronies instead of you. You've just been screwed! P.S. The new company management has just asked you for more money. How much money will you offer to loan them?"
Or perhaps parents run up a large bill and have their kids sign for the bill, which they'll start paying off as soon as they land a job.
Then you could have "The Game of Business". The business owner tells his 3 kids because of a raise in the minimum wage, he can only afford to give 2 of them jobs; he wants them to decide which two of them get the jobs. Of course, a chance card here reads: "Congratulations! Obama thinks you are rich, so now you have to work more to make the same amount of money to spend and invest. How many more hours are you willing to work so Obama gets to spend even more of each new dollar you earn?"
Fifth, the Republicans need to make smarter administration and right-sizing of government a priority; among other things: eliminating redundant functionality and inconsistent data and standards, focusing on government-specific competencies, flattening administrative layers, collapsing approval complexity, implementing business standard processes, improved internal controls and rigorous anti-fraud measures, shortening critical paths (e.g., drug approvals), and more emphasis on taxpayer-oriented services and metrics. After Bush's botched handling of Hurricane Katrina, slow response to a dysfunctional military strategy and multiple incompetent administrative mistakes during the occupation of Iraq, the Republicans need to select a team, while committed to limited government, focuses on excellence of public administration and a more proactive, inclusive, bipartisan approach with the Congress. We also need to look at improving internal rate of returns in entitlement reserves, paying off the debt, and rainy day funds. Certain active or former governors (e.g., Daniels and Romney), military officers (e.g., Petraeus) or business executives come to mind.
Sixth, the Republicans need to focus on a legislative reform agenda, including independent scoring of infrastructure, project and other funding priorities, waiting periods after legislative service before engaging in lobbyist activity, full disclosure of companies or other parties specifically benefiting from add-on provisions, reviews of no-compete and cost-plus contracts, and adequate freezing/review periods involving earmarks (including secret ballot approvals) and major legislation.
Seventh, the GOP needs to look at national economic risk assessment, including exclusive reliance on any one trading partner (e.g., Chinese manufacturing) or resources (such as oil and gas supplies). We need to look at tax, regulatory, or infrastructure incentives to reverse outsourcing manufacturing and information services and to diversify or reestablishing our manufacturing base.
Eighth, Republicans need to do a sober cost-benefit and post-audit "lessons learned" assessment of our Afghanistan and Iraq experiences, including invested American blood and treasure in remote nation-building and the inherent riskiness of a disproportionate deployment of our military relative to the context of our entire national defense concerns.
Seventh, the GOP needs to look at national economic risk assessment, including exclusive reliance on any one trading partner (e.g., Chinese manufacturing) or resources (such as oil and gas supplies). We need to look at tax, regulatory, or infrastructure incentives to reverse outsourcing manufacturing and information services and to diversify or reestablishing our manufacturing base.
Eighth, Republicans need to do a sober cost-benefit and post-audit "lessons learned" assessment of our Afghanistan and Iraq experiences, including invested American blood and treasure in remote nation-building and the inherent riskiness of a disproportionate deployment of our military relative to the context of our entire national defense concerns.
Finally, the Republicans need to establish a comprehensive business/job growth message, including globally competitive tax brackets, improvements to infrastructure, eliminating lawsuit abuse and implementing tort reforms, free trade initiatives, immigration reform, simplified reporting and regulatory burden, more responsive government-dependent processes and services (e.g., exports, resource exploration, and drug or power plant approvals), and a smaller government footprint.
