It’s tough to pick the more remarkable story. On the one hand, John McCain emerged victorious. In so doing he took an intellectually and financially bankrupt campaign polling in the low single digits, picked it up from the floor, and dragged it back into first place. On the other, Republican voters actually picked him. In so doing they have now given their party a decent shot at retaining the presidency. How should Democrats, whoever they chose as their candidate, respond?
McCain’s victory was unquestionably the best possible result for Republicans. Granted: each of the other plausible candidates seemed attractive to the Republican base. Terrorist-haters warmed to Rudy Giuliani. Businessmen backed Mitt Romney. And evangelicals prayed for Mike Huckabee. But all three were flawed national candidates. Giuliani ran the least competent presidential campaign in American political history. Romney’s doubled down on conservatism at a time when Americans wanted a less conservative president. And Huckabee, while proving himself to be among the best – perhaps the best – communicator in American politics, was never quite able to sustain the momentum he gained after winning the Iowa caucuses.
Republicans, instead, held their noses – as Democrats did with John Kerry – and picked the candidate they thought most likely to win. In McCain they have also plumped for a credible, independent-friendly and morally serious politician with many obvious strengths. A proper understanding of these strengths is the first place progressives need to look to understand how he can be beaten.
This list of plus points is long and familiar. It begins with his experience as a veteran, and in particular the compelling tragedy of his experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He has an admirable senatorial record of bipartisanship, and leads on issues that appeal to moderates, like campaign finance reform. This, in turn, buttresses his reputation as a ‘straight talking’ maverick, which increases his ability to reach out to independent voters. (He may even decide to cement this reputation by picking an ‘independent Democrat’, Joe Lieberman, as his running mate.)
To this relatively familiar list, three more factors need to be properly understood when squaring up to McCain: his positive media image, newly rejigged strategy, and appeal to Hispanics.
First, any Democrat must counter McCain’s easy ride in the media. How the media frames a candidate matters enormously, not least because it affects how voters are introduced to their candidacy. John Kerry, for instance, never recovered from the way in which he allowed himself to be framed as a wind-surfing, flip-flopping Brahmin liberal. The media frame for McCain – honest, straight, honourable, bipartisan, decent, heroic – is worrying. But more worrying still is the strong bond between journalists and the candidate. I asked a friend with experience of McCain’s media operation to compare the media’s love of Obama with their attitude to McCain. My friend suggested that the media loved Obama for the ideas he embodies. Their love of McCain is more personal: ‘It’s love for the guy himself, regardless of his story. He’s just a funny, cool old dude. It’s hard to write bad stuff about a guy when the next minute you are wedged next to him on a bus and he’s looking you in the eye, earnestly steaming up over torture, even though he’s talked about it a billion times.’
After puncturing McCain’s media bubble, Democrats must then also understand McCain’s recent change of strategy. Learning the lessons of his 2000 defeat, McCain began his bid for the nomination in 2005 by cosying up to conservatives. He made nice with President Bush, recanted on abortion, talked up his anti-terrorist credentials, and even said pleasant things about Jerry Falwell. Whatever the success of this strategy at the time – and remember, back then, the conventional wisdom was that McCain was unbeatable by any Democrat – it came thoroughly unstuck last year, forcing the senator, as American journalist Ezra Klein put it, to ‘attempt to recapture a bit of that straight talkin’ magic that vaulted him to victory in New Hampshire eight years ago’.
Understanding, and countering, this strategic shift is therefore vital to beating back McCain’s challenge. Yet, if the Democrats can understand both the media landscape and counter McCain’s strategy, they still have a third task: blunting his support among independents and Hispanics. Independent voters are key in any election. But it is the latter group which should worry progressives more.
America’s ‘hispaniciscation’ is perhaps the single most important political trend of coming decades. And Hispanics like John McCain. He is from Arizona. He has spoken up for Spanish issues. He is a family values conservative. And, crucially, he is almost unique among the Republicans in having shown leadership in supporting a sensible plan to allow illegal immigrants to become American citizens. This move combined both political sanity and good moral sense, and consequently drove the Republican right berserk. But it also undermined the ability of Democrats to win the support of the fastest growing demographic group in American history. Even more crucially it imperils progressive efforts to turn blue the critical ‘four corners’ purple states – Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and McCain’s home state of Arizona – that may ultimately decide the general election.
Thankfully, for Democrats, McCain’s strengths are nicely balanced by some obvious weaknesses. Tactically, it is important for the Democrats to paint McCain in the right way. He may be a strong candidate. But he is also grumpy, and old. The American people realise that their leaders should be energetic and tough. They also, as Huckabee’s run showed, warm to people of good humour. McCain, the short-tempered gerontocrat, speaks to neither concern. Equally, McCain’s ‘straight talk’ has left a glorious litany of campaign-friendly quotes for the Democrats. Expect to become very familiar with the following McCain utterances over the next year. We could be in Iraq ‘for 1000 years’. If I’m elected, ‘we’ll have a lot more wars’. ‘I don’t know much about the economy’. ‘How do we beat the bitch? That’s a great question.’
Second, McCain must be held accountable for his policy choices, both at home and abroad. On many issues – immigration, especially – his views are attractive to moderate Democrats and independents. But, on a host of others, his views place him on the far right of his country’s politics. He is, for instance, more gung-ho about Iraq than Bush. He is also itching to confront Iran, and roll back China.
At home, McCain is pro-life, staunchly free-trade, and against both sensible healthcare reforms and repealing the worst bits of the Bush tax cuts. These positions put him at odds with the majority of the American people. Perhaps more importantly, he can justifiably be painted as a flip-flopper on policy in the same mould as Kerry and Romney – given his meandering path between ‘McCain the maverick independent’ and ‘McCain the friend of the Christian right’.
Democrats should not be naïve enough to think that elections are won on policy alone. But they should always remember the policy challenges America faces, and measure McCain against them. On foreign policy he is a leader unable to promote a positive vision of American leadership for an age of peaceful multi-polarity. And, at home, his vision of conservatism-as-usual contains none of the right answers that America needs to rebuild its economy and help its people prepare for the age of globalization. Taken together, these twin failings should be just enough to ensure the straight talk express is run off the road.