CAMPAIGN OUTSIDER McCain: Yes, he could've
By Muhammad Cohen
HONG KONG - History will judge that John McCain never had a chance. Buffeted by
an unpopular president, a detested war and an economic crisis, the history
books will say the old navy man's candidacy was swamped by a tsunami of events
and circumstances. Even the weather broke against him, perfect for Barack
Obama's big outdoor speech at the Democratic Party convention in Denver, and
last night in Chicago, the Windy City, a balmy 71 degrees Fahrenheit (22
Celsius). It seemed Mother Nature had joined the conspiracy against McCain.
But with a steadier hand at the campaign helm, Captain McCain would be the 44th
president of the United States. He drew an
opponent who couldn't match his experience nor his personality. Moreover,
because Obama is an African American and the most liberal member of the Senate,
the right would bury its reservations about McCain and cast its ballots for
him. But McCain made several bad choices along the campaign trail that doomed
his candidacy.
Perhaps no candidate has a more compelling biography than McCain. You can argue
that getting captured by the enemy while dropping bombs doesn't make a man a
hero, but there's no disputing that McCain spent decades serving his nation and
he did it with courage and spirit.
On Capitol Hill, as McCain reminded voters many times, he successfully reached
across party lines. Along with that appealing independent streak, the
self-described maverick also had a mean streak and could be engaging and witty
while indulging it. In an era when party lines have hardened due to media
provocateurs, the travesty of the 2000 election, and blatantly partisan
governing by a president who promised to be a uniter, not a divider, McCain
stood out as a Republican that Democrats could respect, like, and even support.
Flip side of maverick
That likable McCain was rarely seen on the campaign trail. Instead, he too
often showed the flip side of his maverick personality: the guy who's convinced
he's the smartest guy in the room, with no patience for anyone who's slow to
catch on. That's the McCain who, like Vice President Dick Cheney has shattered
the Senate's collegial, sophisticated patina with the f-word. On the campaign
trail, McCain looked like the hopping-mad Yosemite Sam against Obama's
ultra-cool Bugs Bunny.
The McCain whose mouth ran ahead of his mind doomed him on the key issue of the
economy - twice. First, McCain admitted that he really didn't understand the
economy. He surrounded himself with a motley crew of economic advisers,
including Phil Gramm, the former senator from Enron whose wife served on the
board of that poster company for corporate malfeasance, and Carly Fiona, the
deposed chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard, who turned the company on
its founding families as she demolished that iconic bedrock of Silicon Valley.
The program the economic team produced for McCain was an extension of the Bush
prescription of tax cuts for the rich and deregulation that in the best of
times had produced jobless growth and a vast redistribution of wealth to the
top 10% of the economic pyramid.
Then, in September, as the subprime mortgage mess turned into a full-fledged
financial crisis, McCain famously declared, "The fundamentals of our economy
remain strong." The remark underscored McCain's weakness on pocketbook issues -
hey, the guy is married to a millionaire heiress, so he doesn't even need to
know how many houses he has - and that the 72-year-old veteran was out of touch
with what's happening now.
Would you buy a used brain from Bush?
While McCain's bad side was dominating him, the bad seed in the White House was
dominating his campaign. On one hand, the Obama campaign was successfully
tarring McCain with the claim that he was running for Bush's third term. On the
other hand, Bush operatives dominated McCain's campaign brain trust, and they
were fully prepared to win the last election. But they were not ready to win in
2008, when people wanted change and an end to the war in Iraq. These veteran
operatives could pander to the fringes and stoke fears, but they couldn't find
the center. They tried to ignore issues such as the economy until it was far
too late.
After wrapping up the nomination in early March, McCain failed to take
advantage of his head start to take the center from the squabbling Democrats.
Instead, McCain and company failed to establish an overriding image and lay out
the rationale for his campaign. As outlined in the New York Times Magazine last
month, in June, a group of McCain advisers gathered and declared they still
couldn't answer the question, "Why elect John McCain?" The dilemma was never
resolved.
In those months, McCain's team squandered a major opportunity: winning Hillary
Clinton's voters. Clinton swept up white working class voters late in the
primary season who were to the right of Obama, respected experience, and may
have been inclined to support McCain in the wake of an acrimonious primary
fight. But McCain's campaign, perhaps because of who was in charge - or simply
because they just couldn't think that far ahead - never made a serious play for
those voters. Instead, the campaign copied several tactics of the Clinton
campaign, ignoring that Hillary Clinton could only manage a close second place
finish with those tactics.
The vision thing
A frequent criticism of the McCain campaign was that it had tactics but no
overriding strategy. That can be traced to the lack of vision of his handlers
but it also is the fault of the candidate for failing to articulate a vision
for them to follow. So the campaign's messages bounded from Obama supporting
defeat in Iraq to his celebrity - when in fact McCain has been a celebrity ever
since his capture in Hanoi nearly 40 years earlier - from experience to running
against Washington to spread the wealth.
Many of the errors of the McCain campaign stem from trying to win the day's
battle but having no victory plan for the war. That shortcoming played out on
the electoral map when in the final days, McCain's best hope for victory
required overcoming Obama's double-digit lead in Pennsylvania.
The selection of Governor Sarah Palin as a running mate underscored the
campaign's tactical obsession and the impulsiveness of McCain. The choice of
Palin was meant to impress voters who had nowhere else to go and to steal some
of the thunder from the Democrats' triumphant convention. But the choice
ignored the big picture, the issue that was crucial for the oldest candidate
ever seeking to be elected a first term president: was Palin qualified to lead
the free world? She showed herself extraordinarily unworthy of the office, and
she became a polarizing figure who ruined McCain's chances of winning the
center.
From Paris Hilton to Joe the Plumber, the McCain campaign enlisted a lengthy
cast of characters to talk about reasons to vote against Obama. Many of their
arguments failed to connect. In the end, the campaign would have done better
featuring John McCain making the case to vote for John McCain.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America’s story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com),
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
high finance and cheap lingerie.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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On Capitol Hill, as McCain reminded voters many times, he successfully reached
across party lines. Along with that appealing independent streak, the
self-described maverick also had a mean streak and could be engaging and witty
while indulging it. In an era when party lines have hardened due to media
provocateurs, the travesty of the 2000 election, and blatantly partisan
governing by a president who promised to be a uniter, not a divider, McCain
stood out as a Republican that Democrats could respect, like, and even support.
