Dan

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November 5, 2008

Obama Won, But It Was McCain Who Beat Himself

It was tempting, as New Mexico and Ohio turned blue – and you knew it was over – to question whether John McCain had ever really had a chance. With the unpopularity of President Bush, the nation’s war-weariness and the financial markets’ meltdown, how exactly would you prevent the electorate from tossing out the incumbent party?

Rarely has America seen a candidate who generated the kind of excitement on the part of his supporters that Barack Obama has. For all he lacked in experience and track record, he more than made up for it in his ability to become – in his supporters’ eyes – a transformational figure of nearly historic proportions.

Some of us found the devotion of Obama’s backers downright creepy, but devoted they were. How could you have a chance against a powerful figure like that?

But McCain did have a chance. His post-convention lead was more than just a mere bounce, and he held it nearly two weeks after the convention. (Besides, Obama’s performance at the Barackopolis in Denver didn’t give him a bounce at all.)

In order to defeat a captivating personality like Obama, McCain had to make the case for why his experience and his ideas were clearly superior. He could have done that, and if he had, he could have won.

But ever since he won the Republican nomination back in February, McCain jumped all over the place trying to decide what he wanted to be, and what he didn’t want to be. Was he the Maverick who took on his own party? Was he the tax-cutter who would put growth above all else? Was he the spending hawk who would stand in the gap and prevent Congress from continuing its drunken-sailor ways?

It was never clear, partly because right from the start, McCain accepted two premises that mortally wounded him.

The first was that George W. Bush was toxic on the order of nuclear waste, requiring McCain to distance himself from the president in every way possible. But how could he do that by standing up for the surge (which McCain advocated but Bush implemented) and by demanding the extension of the Bush tax cuts, on which McCain had to admit Bush was right and he was wrong?

Bush has certainly not been a perfect president, but he has put in place many policies that have been good for the country. McCain was completely unwilling to acknowledge this for fear of being tarred by association with the president. Oops. He got tarred anyway. Maybe if he had taken the occasion to defend Bush’s better policies, while criticizing his failures (especially on domestic spending), he could have given himself a chance to win the debate.

The second was his refusal to really hit Obama on his worst characteristics, particularly his longtime association with racist America-hating pastor Jeremiah Wright. By declaring during the primary campaign that such attacks were beyond the pale, McCain made it impossible to later come back and engage in such attacks.

McCain would never allow America to engage in unilateral disarmament in a showdown with a foreign foe. He is too wise to the ways of the world. But that’s exactly what he did in the campaign. Obama is inexperienced, ill-prepared and ideologically extreme. But the moderates and independents who decide presidential elections were willing to give him a pass because no one made the case that Republicans had worthwhile ideas for governing the country.

Presumably some in the McCain campaign – if not McCain himself – are preparing to scapegoat Sarah Palin for all this. Please. Sarah Palin has governed Alaska in exactly the manner someone needs to bring to Washington. She was quickly judged by her performance in two ambush media interviews, and the McCain campaign was impotent to rebut the bad vibes by talking about her real record.

Palin was the best thing about McCain’s campaign. Unfortunately, McCain was the worst thing. When Obama made preposterous statements in debates, McCain offered lame retorts while conservatives across the land screamed effective rebuttals at their television sets. And while Obama repeated ad nauseum the meaningless mantra of “change,” McCain ceded him the issue by implausibly trying to claim that he was the real candidate of change.

That was never going to work.

McCain was who he was. He has never been an ideological figure, and his appeal to country and duty – while admirable – was not going to effectively counter Obama’s arguments. The Republican Party probably should have nominated a stronger conservative who has actually accomplished important policy initiatives on behalf of the people they serve in recent years. Unfortunately for the GOP, there are not many people who fit that description. I can think of three: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin.

So an era of exceedingly liberal governance dawns. The Republicans deserve this defeat, even if the American people don’t deserve the consequences of it.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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