What Went Wrong?

An overview of what happened to the McCain campaign.

...an audience of third graders

That's what George Will calls Palin's supporters. Ouch.

He takes aim at McCain and Palin's loose understanding of the Constitution.

Its The Economy .... You Know ....

Here's a post that underscores points made in class today. The increasingly poor performance of the economy may guarantee victory for Barack Obama:

Perpetually fretting Democrats will not want to accept it. The campaigns themselves can't afford to believe it. Many journalists know it but can't say it. And there will certainly be some twists and turns along the way. But take it to a well capitalized bank: Bill Ayers isn't going to save John McCain. The race is over.

John McCain's candidacy is as much a casualty of Wall Street as Lehman or Merrill. Like those once vibrant institutions, McCain's collapse was stunning and quick. One minute you are a well-respected brand. The next you are yelling at the messengers of your demise as all around you the numbers start blinking red and stop adding up.

McCain's road was difficult to begin with: the President of his party has had record-low approval ratings for two years and the number of Americans who say the country is heading in the wrong direction is stratospheric. He also had the misfortune to be pitted against an exceptional candidate running an extremely well-executed campaign.

Still, before Wall Street's collapse Senator McCain was ahead. His approval ratings remained high, his VP pick had generated excitement and interest, and his campaign operatives were capable, on any given day, of winning news cycles and giving their opponents fits. And then the underpinnings of American capitalism begin to sink -- and with them sunk McCain.

An election dominated at its inception by the war in Iraq is now overwhelmingly focused on the economy. More than half of voters in polls say that the economy is their top concern and Senator Obama enjoys double digit leads among voters asked who can better fix our economic mess. Put simply, there is no way Senator McCain can win if he continues to trail Senator Obama by double digits on the top concern of more than half of voters.

State polls are beginning to reflect this. If the election were tomorrow, Obama would win all of the states John Kerry carried and add Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio and Florida. Barack Obama is campaigning in Indiana, which last went for a Democrat in 1964 and North Carolina, which has gone for a Democrat only once in thirty-four years. At the same time John McCain has pulled out of Michigan and Sarah Palin has been forced to visit Nebraska.

No Bounces

Generally presidential candidates get bounces in public opinion polls (brief increases in support) after they are nominated by their party in the national convention and after they announce their vice presidential selections.

Neither candidate got much of one. The Moderate Voice explains:

A new Gallup Daily tracking poll taken after the Democratic convention and after Republican Senator John McCain picked Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate shows Democratic Presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama’s lead down two points. Obama now has a 6 point lead.

Both Gallup and a website that analyzes polls suggest this means (1) Obama didn’t get much of a convention bounce but its hard to judge given the rapidity of McCain’s Veep announcement, (2)McCain’s Palin pick didn’t give him an out of the ordinary Vice Presidential pick bounce, and (3) if the Palin pick is factored in Democrats shouldn’t be too upset because Obama seemingly held up fairly well.

Spinning the Palin Selection

Now that John McCain has made his selection of a Vice Presidential candidate, pundits are figuring out what this says about McCain. Here's input from McCain's hometown newspaper, the Arizona Republic, summary below:

6 thing the Palin pick says about "maverick" McCain:

1- He's desperate
2- He's willing to gamble - big time
3- He's worried about the political implications of his age
4- He's not worried about the actuarial implications of his age
5- He's worried about his conservative base
6- At the end of the day, McCain is still McCain

Let's comment in class.

Is McCain's Strategy Working?

The Washinton Times indicates that it just might be. The story suggests that race may play a factor in a shift away from Obama.

State Republican Party leaders interviewed by The Washington Times said fear of a far-left Obama presidency is warming once-skeptical voters to Sen. John McCain, fueling growing enthusiasm among Republicans that Mr. McCain's more aggressive campaigning can lead to victory.

"It appears that the more that Obama speaks, the more afraid folks in South Carolina get," said Spartanburg County Republican Party Chairman Rick Beltram. "We are seeing 'die-hard' Democrats tell us that Obama is not their man.

"We are expecting the white Democrats to be fleeing the Democratic ship when November 4 comes around - plus, the Democratic candidate [Bob Conley] that is running against Senator [Lindsey] Graham is also running away from the Democrats, and you can quote me on that," Mr. Beltram said.

In union-dominated Michigan, a state targeted by both major parties, state Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis said he is seeing signs that independents and Reagan Democrats are moving toward Mr. McCain.

"People who may have been apprehensive about McCain now see this race as potentially winnable," Mr. Anuzis said.

The latest daily tracking poll by Gallup shows the presidential contest in a statistical dead heat, with the Illinois Democrat three percentage points ahead of the Arizona Republican, 46 percent to 43 percent. National tracking polls of likely voters

Campaigning: Another peak inside the McCain Campaign

From today's NYT:

...Mr. McCain is called the White Tornado by some people who have worked for him over the years. Throughout his presidential campaign, he has been the overseer of a kingdom of dissenting camps, unclear lines of command and an unsettled atmosphere that keeps aides constantly on edge.

Even now, after a shake-up that aides said had brought an unusual degree of order to Mr. McCain’s disorderly world in the last month, two of his pollsters are at odds over parts of the campaign’s message, while past and current aides have been trading snippy exchanges debating the wisdom of attack advertisements he has aimed at Mr. Obama.

In an interview, Mr. McCain said he believed an organization consisting of sometimes colliding centers of power made sure that a candidate, or a president, reached fully informed decisions. “You’ve got to have competing opinions,” he said.

“I think a certain amount of tension is very healthy, and a certain amount of different views,” he said. “Because of the bubble that a president is in, and the bubble that a candidate is in, sometimes you find out afterwards something that — ‘Oh boy, I wish I had heard thus and such and so and so.’ So I appreciate and want some of the tension; I don’t want too much of it, obviously, because we have to have certain efficiencies. But I think there is a balance there.”

Mr. McCain hungers for information. He can regularly be seen reading newspapers from cover to cover, and aides say he embraces the briefing books given to him each night. His aides say he is especially studious when it comes to economic issues, an area in which he has admitted weakness. A former fighter pilot, Mr. McCain preaches the need to improvise under pressure, subscribing to the military maxim that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The bursts of temper fellow senators have endured are rarely directed at his underlings. Indeed Mr. McCain has a history of being surrounded by people who are intensely loyal to him — and remain so even after being pushed off his ship.

But if Mr. McCain’s management style has kept him well informed and flexible, its drawbacks have been especially evident in the many often turbulent months since he began his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. It offers a contrast to the more rigidly controlled and nearly corporate management style that has marked the campaign of Mr. Obama, his Democratic counterpart. If anything, it recalls the freewheeling ways of the last Republican senator to win his party’s presidential nomination, Bob Dole in 1996.

Campaigning: About McCain Going Negative

Here's a chunk of text from Slate's Today's Papers about McCain's decision to go negative on Obama:

. . . Obama's efforts to "portray himself as presidential … run the risk of appearing arrogant or presumptuous," says the LAT. That's exactly what the McCain campaign is hoping for as it released an advertisement yesterday that compares—"and not in a good way," the NYT helpfully specifies—Obama to celebrities like Britney Spears by showing pictures of his speech in Berlin last week. "Right now, both campaigns have to do the same thing, which is establish who Barack Obama is," a Republican pollster tells the LAT. "That's the real battle going on."

Something the LAT fails to mention but the NYT points out in its off-lead is that McCain's tactic comes straight out of the President George Bush playbook that seeks "to make campaigns referendums on its opponents." The WP goes one step further and directly states that McCain is "adopting the aggressive, take-no-prisoners style of Karl Rove." Everyone says that even some Republicans have been taken aback by the recent aggressiveness of McCain's attacks. Espousing such a persistent negative message about his opponent could easily evaporate one of the main aspects working in McCain's favor—his image as a politician who doesn't play by the normal rules of Washington. Still, it's clear that since much of the public is trying to make up its mind about Obama, McCain has a great opportunity to plant doubts about the Democrat that could persist until Election Day.

That is assuming he can stick to the message. In a front-page piece that almost (but not quite) implies that McCain's aides are thrusting this aggressive style on the candidate against his will, the Post notes that the senator from Arizona is unpredictable and dislikes parroting talking points over and over again. As a result, McCain's "advisers cringe" when he "keeps talking" and subsequently dilutes what could have been a good sound bite. McCain's campaign has been criticized for lacking a consistent message, but to some Republicans that failure has more to do with the candidate's shortcomings rather than the campaign's failures. And the NYT points out that there are those who believe that trying to "apply the Bush model" to McCain simply won't work. "It could be the Coca-Cola strategy of marketing that they're trying to apply to Dr Pepper," a former McCain strategist said.

In the Post's op-ed page, David Ignatius flat-out suggests that what we're seeing now isn't the real McCain. In a fawning piece that goes through McCain's biography, Ignatius says the presumptive Republican nominee needs to stop listening to advisers and start being himself. "What's damaging the McCain campaign now, I suspect, is that this fiercely independent man is trying to please other people," writes Ignatius. "He should give that up and be the person whose voice shines through the pages of his life story."

Not everyone agrees. In a piece that is bluntly (disrespectfully?) titled "Is John McCain Stupid?" the WSJ's Daniel Henninger writes that McCain is constantly making things harder for himself on the campaign trail by talking too much and failing to make things simple. "Someone in the McCain circle had better do some straight talking to the candidate," writes Henninger, who suggests that, essentially, the presumptive Republican nominee needs to be saved from himself. Instead of playing to win, McCain is "competing as if he expects the other side to lose it for him."

In the LAT, Jonathan Chait also essentially says that Obama needs to let go of his instincts, but in the other direction. Instead of just presenting himself as the better candidate, Obama must tell voters why they shouldn't vote for McCain. Just like McCain seems to be following Bush's playbook, Chait says Obama appears to have picked up John Kerry's strategy that worked so well in 2004. Now, instead of relying on his usual "weak-tea replies" that "express 'disappointment' with McCain," Obama needs to go on the offensive and start attacking. "Obama doesn't need to engage in character assassination and baseless charges, as his opponent has done," writes Chait. "All he needs to do is stop letting McCain paint a wildly distorted self-portrait."

McCain as TR

In a New York Times interview, John McCain says he will model his presidency on Theodore Roosevelt's:

He said government should play an important role in areas like addressing climate change, regulating campaign finance and taking care of “those in America who cannot take care of themselves.”

“I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold,” Mr. McCain said, referring to Roosevelt’s reputation for reform, environmentalism and tough foreign policy.

The interview helps put McCain's effort to appeal to moderates (his swing to the center) in context:

The views expressed by Mr. McCain in the 45-minute interview here Friday illustrated the challenge the probable Republican presidential nominee faces as he tries to navigate the sensibilities of his party’s conservative base and those of the moderate and independent voters he needs to defeat Senator Barack Obama, his Democratic rival.

His responses suggested that he was basically in sync with his party’s conservative core but was not always willing to use the power of the federal government to impose those values. He also expressed a willingness to deploy government power and influence where free-market purists might hesitate to do so and to consider unleashing military force for moral reasons.

In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has left many Republicans unsettled about his ideological bearings by toggling between reliably conservative issues like support for gun owners’ rights and an emphasis on centrist messages like his willingness to tackle global warming and provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Those tensions were apparent in the interview as well, as Mr. McCain offered a variety of answers — sometimes nuanced in their phrasing, sometimes not — about his views on social issues.

It worked for TR, but Republicans distanced themselves from him long ago. It may not work for McCain.

Lurching to the Left?

First Obama now McCain.

Slate highlights a Los Angeles Times story on McCain's attempt to appeal to Latino voters, which includes muddying the waters on immigration. Is he countering Obama's move to the center with one of his own?

Although McCain spent much of the primary campaign assuring Republicans that his priority in immigration policy would center on securing the border with Mexico, he's now singing a different tune. Mindful of the growing importance of the Latino vote in swing states, as well as the fact that Barack Obama has a strong lead with that group of voters, McCain is now espousing "a message that gives equal weight to helping employers and immigrant workers and their families," says the LAT. In new ads, McCain says that dealing with the needs of immigrants is "as important" as securing the border. Although he never comes out and says he wants to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, "his subtle language matches that of legalization advocates," notes the LAT.

And what of illegal immigration anyway? Has $4 gasoline pushed it off the front page?

. . . a more inclusive conservatism

Another good column from David Brooks today. Moderately conservative Republicans are supporting John McCain despite the fact that (more ideologically pure) conservative leaders are horrified about his possible nomination. Limbaugh thinks he will destroy the party. This author thinks he will capitulate to Democrats on every issue other than the war.

The irony of it all, says Brooks, is two fold. First, the sainted Ronald Reagan included both ideological conservatives and moderates in his administration, and second, McCain could actually win.

I see a parallel between current conservatism and liberalism in the sixties when after years of success, the movement began to splinter and warring factions competed over which was more ideologically pure. The battles weakened the movement and gave an opportunity for an emerging conservative movement to prosper. Conservative leaders might want to take heed, but they wont.