Being John McCain
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in 2008 | Insurgent Campaigning | John McCain — Comments (39) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Now that John McCain has wrapped up the Republican nomination for the Presidency, he is trying to get used to his status as an electoral big shot. This report indicates some lingering discomfort with the role:
Senator John McCain was sitting in the front of his fancy-pants front-runner's plane, trying to get comfortable. He fidgeted, occasionally lapsing into un-McCainlike blandness: "There is a process in place that will formalize the methodology," he said in describing how his free-form campaign style will assume the discipline expected of a probable Republican standard-bearer.
The position is unnatural to Mr. McCain, who has typically floundered when not playing the insurgent role. But now he is in the midst of an at-times awkward transition -- from being one of the most disruptive figures in his party to someone playing it safer, not to mention trying to make nice with Republicans he clearly despises and who feel similarly about him.
"I'm trying to unify the party," he says a lot these days, as if reminding himself. He is trying to remain "Johnny B. Goode" (the song blares over a loudspeaker at some McCain rallies), giving relatively cautious answers and trying to rein in his pugnacity, if not his wisecracks.
Read on . . .
You know something? This is a bad idea. Just because McCain has the nomination wrapped up does not mean that he suddenly has to turn into the gold-plated frontrunner. As the article indicates--and as anyone familiar with McCain's history knows--McCain is at his best when he is playing the role of a campaign insurgent. He should continue to do so.
What does he have to lose? Everyone believes that Barack Obama is a rock star and if Hillary Clinton overtakes him, she will be viewed as a rock star given her potential to become the first female President. McCain, an old white guy, will never get that kind of treatment and even if he does, it is clear that he doesn't take well to it.
So why not stick with what has worked for McCain thus far? Why not remain the wisecracking, carefree candidate who came back from the political dead to win the Republican nomination for the Presidency? There is no reason to stop an insurgent campaign now. McCain should stop thinking of himself as the frontrunner for the Republican Presidential nomination. That nomination has been won. What has not been won, however, is the general election and the best way for McCain to win it is with the same devil-may-care, nothing-left-to-lose attitude that has helped him succeed in ways that pundits and reporters did not think possible as little as nine or ten months ago.
In short, listen to Patrick Ruffini.
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Being John McCain 39 Comments (0 topical, 39 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I had the same reaction, that's a stupid way to start unless if you want to appear impartial..
This article does bring up an important point though. McCain's stock and trade has been attacking Republicans, Now he's in the position of having to make nice with them and attack those he'se spent his political life "Reaching out to"!
This election is going to be pathetic!
Vote for your preferred candidate even if they've dropped out. Don't follow the herd in the stampede!
That article on McCain seemed to come from an overly negative perspective, not surprisingly. I agree that McCain needs to be himself but controlling his temper is probably a pretty good idea at this point. It sounds as if some in the media are possibly trying to provoke him at times (Romney's support being a flip flop). He definitely needs to be careful about what he says these days.
Joliphant nailed it: this is the New York Times being the New York Times. They couldn't destroy McCain by "endorsing" him amongst the Republicans, so they're painting a false portrait to hang next to the one of the dashing, debonair Senator from Illinois. Barack "Once in a Lifetime Opportunity" Obama.
I'd like to hear Fred Barnes's take. He never seemed much to care for John McCain, so we wouldn't get a Hewitt-like bit of effusing, but at least it would be honest.
It's all the media's fault. There might actually be something in there worthwhile, like the fact that whether he's free wheeling "insurgent" or a curmudgeon, McCain doesn't have to work on the moderates or the independents. He'll do well with both.
He's in the awful position of having to appeal to the party base of conservatives without losing the other two, moderates and indies.
The guy is a lose cannon, hates the GOP base, and yet is our nominee.
This is big trouble. There's a lot of conservatives who will use this as their excuse to not vote or vote for the other side, just to get back at him for his weird voting history.
99% of the base will do the latter
It's February. Eat the Valentine Candy. By Easter, all will be on board.
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
you hope! Time will tell!
Vote for your preferred candidate even if they've dropped out. Don't follow the herd in the stampede!
He does not hate the GOP base; rather, he has embraced a few positions on a few issues which are almost repugnant and gone about promoting his positions like a bully with his fingers in his ears. If he wants to be President, this has to stop. Remember, he hasn't done anything like it for several years.
Ronald Reagan appealed to the party base of conservatives without losing moderates and indies. To be certain, John McCain is no Ronald Reagan, but he does have a special talent for holding the base without losing those not a part of the base.
A conservative will not vote for the other side, expecially not when that is the objectionable thing of which he accuses John McCain; if he does, he needs to check his professed political philosophy and why he professes it. If a large chunk of "conservatives" vote or don't vote on the basis of their own perceived revenge or group revenge, then we need to rethink Ronald Reagan as the exemplar of all Republican conservatism.
No, I think conservatives will examine the stakes this election, look at the entire picture of the candidates, and choose to vote for the best candidate. There are plenty of things with which I disagree with him, but John McCain is easily the best candidate available.
I get the distinct sense a good deal of conservatives will just stay home. They can't stomach voting for a democrat, they all seem antithetical to anything remotely American. But at the same time they don't want to show support for someone who is so viciously anti-conservative and so vehemently set in his positions.
McCain doesn't bring much to the table to excite. He has to work on a lot of things and he just won't have time to get it done in 6 months.
if "conservatives" don't care about winning the War on Terror enough to vote in November, then those conservatives are chaff and not valuable allies.
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Molon Labe!
Most in flyover country sees little difference between him and the Democrats!
Vote for your preferred candidate even if they've dropped out. Don't follow the herd in the stampede!
He is the Republican nominee, not the "base" nominee, if we have learned anything from this primary it is that the once significant Republican "base" has been rendered useless. There has been a shift where the moderate/independant Rebuplicans are the current "base" and the former "base" is now the fringe.
conservative, but one can easily lose sight of the forrest for the trees.
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Molon Labe!
With Reagan we leaped forward. Now its just one foot in front of the other.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
things are much better than a month ago, but there will always be naysayers, that is one thing history has always shown. At some point we need to ignore the naysayers because "convincing" them will take up too much time and energy.
I doubt many hard core conservatives would say we have had the perfect candidate since Reagan. We don't need perfection, we need to win, and start acting like winners again.
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Molon Labe!
"... it is that the once significant Republican "base" has been rendered useless"
You can't possibly back up such a hyperbolic analysis. Rendered useless? That's absurd.
The only people who think the base has shifted are the ones making it so by withholding their votes. Keep that up and soon enough prophecy becomes reality. In the meantime a lot of base voters, not the majority, have supported McCain. I'm a base voter, and I've supported him since before the SC primary when I left Fred.
The logic is just not there. Even if your crazy assertion that the base was now the fringe was accurate, you couldn't blame the primaries or John McCain for it. Elections don't change the composition of the electorate. Elections don't move people to new districts, or replace them with clones!
This election proves that it is a unique election, that there were hard choices to make. It proves that some of us believed that this time, this year, this election, John McCain was the best man for the job from among those running.
I liked Fred too, but McCain is a better candidate, and is frankly better Presidential material. That he isn't sufficiently conservative isn't an indictment of the party or the electorate. It's merely a happenstance, the situation as it stands this time.
The idea that one primary season defines the party for all time is simultaneously mystifying and banal.
absentee
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
http://thehinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
www.race42008.com
for now? or is this the way you want it to be from now on?
Vote for your preferred candidate even if they've dropped out. Don't follow the herd in the stampede!
doesn't offend the conservative base of Republican Party. Can we trust him to do that?
The truth is, I've been feeling like holding a ten foot pole between me and McCain when debating various issues with my friends. Why do I feel like that? If he were to tell me to jump off a cliff, I'd tell him, "Do it yourself!" No motivation to rally behind him, other than to vote him as anti-Hillary or anti-Obama candidate.
Honestly, I WANT McCain to make me feeling like voting FOR him as MCCAIN candidate. If he plays campaign insurgent and work on his strengths, great! Anything else than that, I'd question his ability to hold my interest.
No offense to those euthanistic (sp?) McCain supporters.
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Daniel 2:20 And he [God] changeth the times and seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding.
“The difference between a Republican and a Democrat is the Democrat is a cannibal -- they have to live off each other--while the Republicans, why, they live off the Democrats.” --- Will Rogers
McCain does nothing for conservatives. Not one thing. I have the same feeling as you. The sinking, oh dear jesus not him, feeling in the pit of my stomach that says, we just lost the election.
He's boring like Dole and meanspirited like Kerry. He's holier than thou like Gore and he's "straight" like Mondale.
He's the worst of all the losers in the last 30 years, except Dukakis who was actually a governor at one point and has a management track record.
McCain's a problem and he only has 6 months to turn it around.
It's not enough to say that McCain is better than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. McCain is still someone who really wants to junk the 1st amendment to the US Constitution and make it very hard for non-incumbents who are not good buddies with Tim Russert to get a political message out.
From a moral perspective, it's hard to support John McCain. McCain has spent the last 10 or so years voting against important tax cuts, supporting bad legislation, opposing the nuclear option to overcome Democrats' judicial filibusters and now he needs conservative support.
I can take a "lesser of two evils" attitude and vote for McCain, perhaps. But the US took the lesser of two evils when it chose to ally itself with the Soviet Union against Hitler's Germany during World War II. The result was that Eastern Europe had to live under the Soviet boot for 40 years.
Deep down, conservatives know that electing John McCain is going to result in a similar "victory." In other words, it will be a hollow victory.
The slams on McCain. The transparency of the "hit" nature of this piece is, well, transparent. The media will portray him as the underdog in the general, so an underdog (I really bristle at the "insurgent" moniker) campaign fits well.
McCain has a great opportunity here to build a coalition of conservatives & "Reagan democrats" & independents who will not buy the statist ideas & policies of the democrat candidate.
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Donate to the Rs in Close Senate Races through Slatecard
He got the nomination by basically being the last man standing, by being invisible as everyone else was knocked out. This was, in fact, the perfect strategy for him, because there simply wasn't enough time for people to remember why they disliked him.
But those people aren't solidly on board, so McCain can't do the traditional 'tack to the left' Republican nominee dance. If he moves any further left than the 65 ACU he's been over the last few years he'll have no chance.
So in my view, McCain has exactly one winning strategy. Stay off camera and shut up until about September, and hope the Democrats continue on their self-destructive course. At this point, nothing he can say will be net positive to voters. Any attempts to convince people he actually is a conservative will alienate the independent voters he needs, and any moves to the left will erode his very tenuous hold on the conservatives.
A good candidate at this point could tack to the center, because those of us on the right would just know it for the pandering it is. Much like Clinton I campaigning on welfare reform and middle class tax cuts. The Dems knew he didn't really mean it. That option is simply not available for McCain.
That is an incredibly bleak view. You're saying that the Republican nominee (McCain) shouldn't do or say anything, propose no new ideas or policy and just pray the competition self destructs.
Unfortunately I see many Republicans thinking that because the Dem race is close that they will tear each other apart and implode, this is the most idiotic analysis I have ever seen! The Democrats primary race is razor close and exciting, the media is eating it up and covering them 24/7 McCain has already been forgotten. If he shuts up til September, this will be a race between Hillary and Obama for President, if it isn't already! McCain needs to do something, strike that, anything to remain relevant.
I've been bleak since I saw the lousy slate of candidates we had, early last year, and other than a very small ray of hope when Thompson was in the race, I've seen nothing to brighten it. Any other nominee would be able to pander to the center without penalty. McCain simply can't, and hope to win the election because of the corner he's painted himself into.
What would be ideal is a candidate that doesn't move to the center, but instead moves the center towards him. But that was Reagan, and we're probably not going to get another one in my lifetime.
McCain is who he is, the bipolar candidate, who swings wildly between the right and the left. And as anyone who has lived around someone like that can tell you, it's a wild ride which generally only leads to heartache and pain.
Actually, in 1980, Reagan did not move the center toward him. The center had moved away from Carter and were looking for an alternative--any alternative. The GOP could have nominated anybody that year--Bush Senior was the second choice after Reagan--and won the election as soon as they "closed the sale" by showing the candidate was qualified and responsible.
That was a one-time unique situation caused by Carter's extreme unpopularity (even more unpopular then than Bush Junior is now). If Carter had been a more effective and hence more popular President, Reagan could never have toppled him.
It's one thing to run against a highly unpopular Democrat incumbent (Truman, LBJ, Carter). It's quite another thing when the unpopular incumbent is a Republican (Nixon, Bush Junior). What worked in the former scenario won't work in the latter.
If your nominee agrees with your base but doesn't excite them, you're done. In 2004, I remember a lot of my liberal friends saying things like "well, he's not very exciting, and his record's a bit dodgy, but hate for the enemy will see us through." No, it won't. Not when the enemy is a foreign war, not when it's domestic socialism. Not ever.
The good news is, McCain knows how to not be boring, which Kerry didn't master until after the pressure was off. The bad news is, McCain created his non-boring insurgent role by doing the things that get him pilloried. In other words, it seems like the right strategy is for McCain to do whatever he wants and concede nothing to the conservative base. But then, I would think that.
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Warning: poster leans left.
That was supposed to be in reply to Demarche. I /know/ I hit 'Reply To This'; does anyone know what else I might have done wrong?
each individual post has a Reply To This under it. You used the one at the bottom of the page, which is a reply to the blog -- you'll figure it out
Like the term 'fancy-pants'
After years of insincere adulation from the media as a maverick and, as the saying goes, one who could cross the aisle, this will be tough to take over the coming months. Will he start to crack?
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
Most posters so far, seem to be assuming that "the base" is some sort of monolithic entity, which votes on cue for or against this or that candidate.
In truth, "the base" is more diverse and more fragmented. Indeed, that is why McCain captured the GOP nomination: The base was actually divided amongst itself. Nativists favored Tancredo and Hunter. Evangelicals favored Huckabee. Economic conservatives favored Romney or even Giuliani (despite Rudy's pro-choice views).
And McCain can use that. He can micro-target those factions within the base that might be most receptive to his message.
The nativists who want the illegals and their anchor babies booted back over the border, McCain can just forget about. The nativists have said they just don't want too many Hispanics in the country, because they will end up outvoting the white folks. McCain can't start talking like that. He can't start talking like Tancredo or Michelle Malkin's groupies, if he is to have any hope of winning over moderate and Hispanic voters in swing states and Blue States.
On the other hand, McCain is staunchly pro-life (a fact evidently unknown to many in the base who think somehow that he's a "liberal extremist"). He can restate his pro-life views and reassure them, without alienating the rest of the electorate who already know he's not pro-choice.
McCain has already begun to clarify his economic views as well. Economic conservatives ought to like his strong stance against pork.
It's those nativists, the true descendants of Father Coughlin and the Know-Nothings, that McCain can do nothing about. McCain should just state his position--build the fence, enforce the law on employers--and if that's not enough for them, then so be it.
of how to start hurting him in the general.
"Senator John McCain was sitting in the front of his fancy-pants front-runner's plane"
When you start with a line like that its pretty obvious where the report is going.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777