GOP Nominee
Former Candidates
Much has been made of John McCain’s strong standing in national polls, and, more importantly, in polling from battleground states. Much has also been made of Barack Obama’s weakness among white voters, the poor judgment he has shown in his choice of associates, his inexperience, and so forth. The conventional wisdom (mostly among those who like to think that they are the makers of conventional wisdom) is that Obama is a weak general election candidate. He’s the new George McGovern, the new Walter Mondale. We’re told that we’re in for a McCain landslide this fall to the tune of 300+ electoral votes.
After the tsunami of 2006, and the ennui of 2007, the narrative being written by some of the conserative blogosphere is, admittedly, appealing: Just when we thought we were looking down the barrel of a government dominated by Democrats, the Democrats pick the one guy who just can’t win. Even I bought into this narrative. It gives us hope. Everyone loves hope - just ask Barack Obama!
But, perhaps we should take a step back and do a little self-examination. Barring some catastrophic revelation, we have to assume that Obama is more or less at the nadir of his appeal. He has had a VERY bad couple of months: Wright, Ayers, “bitter”, and his problem with white folks are all very much on the forefront of people’s minds. They’ve been all over the news. And, while they will make great fodder for general election ads, we can safely assume that the ever reluctant-to-go-negative McCain will not be paying to air them…heck he may not have the money to air them if he WANTED to. Moreover, given that these controversies will be old news by October, I suspect that the ads won’t pack the hoped-for punch anyway.
McCain, on the other hand, has yet to get his comeuppance. It’s true that Americans know McCain very well. They believe he is honest, trustworthy, moderate, and selfless. Those things are all true. Americans also believe that he has a questionable temper, has sold out to the right wing of the Republican Party to get the nomination, and is a little too in love with the Iraq War. None of this is going to surprise anyone - and we oughtn’t expect ads on these topics to do any damage to The Maverick.
But, what worries me is that McCain hasn’t been swiftboated yet. Obama, to a large extent, has. Obama’s strongest appeal was that he was a post-racial, post-partisan moderate with good judgment. That image has been pretty thoroughly tarnished by Wright, Ayers, his ultra-liberal record, etc. But, Obama has shown a pretty strong chin: he’s dipped in the polls, but he’s still hanging right on around the margin of error nationally.
McCain, on the other hand, has to be sweating - as I do - the inevitable Keating Five ads. McCain’s strongest appeal is that he can be trusted…he’s incorruptable, honest, and has solid judgment. The Keating Five scandal undermines all of those attributes in the mind of the public. What’s worse, though, is that (1) most of the public doesn’t know what Keating Five is, (2) almost nobody knows that McCain was involved, and (3) very few people are going to bother doing the research about it to discover that McCain was basically an innocent who was dragged through the mud to provide cover for the other Keating Four (they were all Democrats - had McCain been dismissed from the investigation, it would have looked very bad for the Democrat Party).
I’m a little bit worried that more hasn’t been done by the McCain camp to anticipate his eventual swiftboating, or to take the sting out of the information. I have no doubt that the McCain campaign has ads already cut to respond to the inevitable 527 Keating Five spots. But, it seems to me that the best way for McCain to handle this potential problem is for him to start talking about it now. Any good P.R. guy or trial lawyer will tell you that the best way to deal with bad facts is to control them by talking about them before you opponent does. That way, you get to present the bad fact in the best possible light - you get to define the narrative and frame the debate. By the time your opponent brings it up, it’s too late.
McCain needs to go on Meet the Press and talk about it. He needs to have a friendly 527 running ads that talk about the Keating Five scandal, but which present McCain’s role in that investigation fairly and accurately. And he needs to do it now, while the news cycle and public attention is dominated by the bickering Democrat candidates. Then, when the Democrats bring this up in October, it will be old news and McCain can say “I spent 2 weeks talking about that back in May, and I’ve said everything about it that I need to. The American people know about the Keating Five incident, and they know that they can trust me.”
May 10th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Jerome Armstrong over at MyDD (I know, I know…) has an intersting nugget on his page.
From WV polling,
http://mydd.com/
May 10th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
One comforting sign is that McCain seems well-prepared to battle back. Witness the NYT smear job from a couple of months ago. McCain has a competent team. They can’t take anything for granted. But that is a good sign.
May 10th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Not the nadir.
Good points, but your points are well known, and will be acted upon.
He is too far too the left and cannot be elected.
more later
May 10th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Michael,
Rest assured Reverend Wright will do his very best to sabotage Obama’s candidacy in October as he further advances his shameless career in grievance mongering on his book tour. Failure to do so could well result in Obama’s election, and, consequently, the discrediting of Wright’s anti-American/black liberation theology message of hatred.
May 10th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Michael,
Interesting idea, but if I recall, McCain talked alot about Keating Five in 2000, and he certainly talks about it in his books (I’ve read 2 or 3 of them). I’m not saying the Democrats won’t bring it up, but it’s not clear to me why McCain can’t say “where were you in 2000, when I was basing my entire campaign on my failures in the Keating Five scandal, and my need to make amends?” Also, I think Ayers in particular has hardly been aired as much as it will be eventually. Wright’s damage may be done, but Ayers and Rezko still have a hurtin to put on Obama.
May 10th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
3. Agreed. Not the nadir. Hillary has succeeded in turning Obama from Wayne Brady into Richard Pryor. I’m glad she did that work. But he hasn’t even started to get hit on policy: Guns, taxes, BAIPA, porn . . .
May 10th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
The thing I worry about with McCain isn’t Keating Five, or any traditional swift-boating; instead I worry that McCain doesn’t know how to deal with attacks from his left. He hasn’t a competitive race in Congress since first winning his house seat. He ran to Bush’s left in 2000 and to Romney, Rudy, and Fred’s left in 2008. He hasn’t faced someone more liberal then him, in competitive race, in 20+ years.
I’m not sure he knows how to defend conservatism, and the few times he’s tried to defend the more conservative elements of the Republican platform, he’s ended up seeming insincere or uncomfortable. He doesn’t like to talk about abortion, and when forced to talk about it, he seems to repeat the pat Republican line. He looked hopelessly insincere defending the Bush tax cuts in the primary, after voting against them initially. Pork-barrel spending and Iraq are about the only conservative issues where McCain doesn’t come off seeming squeamish, when questioned from the left.
McCain has a jaw of steel fending off attacks from the right, but he’s considerably less certain defending attacks from the left. The good news is, Obama hasn’t been seriously questioned from the right either. Hillary went after him stylistically and culturally from the right, but with the exception of a few insinuations about his toughness (meeting with Iran without pre-conditions, etc), she hasn’t actually forced him to defend any of his extremely liberal policies. Because she shares the vast majority of his goals. So it’s not clear that McCain’s in a substantially worse position then Obama in this regard.
May 10th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
The Washington Post ran a story this week about McCain pusing a land deal for a contributor. That essentially is also what the Keating Five scandal was about as well as the story about McCain’s affair with a lobbyist. Are we to believe that is all there is?
There is a story in the NYTimes today about McCain’s campaign using his wife’s corporate jet, an obvious campaign contribution worth thousands. So he is taking advantage of his wife’s wealth but not disclosing her tax returns. That’s not full disclosure.
These stories all go to the heart of McCain’s image. The dems aren’t going to smear him as an Admiral Stockdale, but rather as a Cunningham who used his office to do favors for contributors.
May 10th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
More on Obama and the “Chicago Way”:
http://weblogs.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/blog/2008/05/obama_unstained_by_chicago_way.html
Chicago politics is … er, interesting. Nobody comes up out of that sewer without retaining a bit of the smell. So I agree that Obama has not reached his nadir.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Sean,
On the abortion issue, it’s hardly controversial to advocate upholding existing constitutional law — protecting a women’s right up to the point of viability.
Porn??? Do you really think anyone but those on the religious right seriously care that Obama opposes the federal government banning businesses from selling pornographic material within 5 miles of a school? Romney was worthy of ridicule and derision when he said he wanted all computer manufacturers to have an ‘anti-porn button’ on every PC.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
When I was opposing McCain in the primary, Keating 5 was one of my arguments against nominating him. Since he became the consensus nominee I’ve researched him more thoroughly, and while I stand by my other attacks against him, I’ve concluded that he was almost completely innocent of the Keating 5 charges against him. He received a lot of quid from Keating, but didn’t provide any quo. This made him appear guilty as sin, but in fact he didn’t do anything wrong except take Keating’s largesse before he got into trouble. This event was extremely traumatic for McCain, who values honor above all. Obama isn’t dumb enough to attack him for it.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
“Romney was worthy of ridicule and derision when he said he wanted all computer manufacturers to have an ‘anti-porn button’ on every PC.”
Yes, god forbid parents have an easier time controlling what their children see. Its true, most internet systems already come with it, but why not mandate it?
May 10th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
10. RE abortion: the BAIPA argument is a simple argument perfect for a 30 second ad, and it is just the kind of thing that will send working class whites screaming. The porn thing goes hand-in-glove with the guns thing. Honestly, I’m not exactly part of the religious right, but who the hell votes to ban gun shops from within 10 miles of a school (which would effectively ban gun shops, but that’s a different matter), but wouldn’t do the same with porn shops?
May 10th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
15-yard penalty for misuse of the term “swiftboating”. No one played any dirty tricks on Obama. His radical past is just coming to into view.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Aron in 10, where did Sean mention abortion, as protected by Supreme Court edict, in 6?
May 10th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
PnGrata,
Sean’s mention of BAIPA was in reference to this:
From Obama’s March 30, 2001 remarks on the Illinois Senate floor:
OBAMA: This bill was fairly extensively debated in the Judiciary Committee, and so I won’t belabor the issue. I do want to just make sure that everybody in the Senate knows what this bill is about, as I understand it. Senator O’Malley, the testimony during the committee indicated that one of the key concerns was — is that there was a method of abortion, an induced abortion, where the — the fetus or child, as — as some might describe it, is still temporarily alive outside the womb. And one of the concerns that came out in the testimony was the fact that they were not being properly cared for during that brief period of time that they were still living. Is that correct? Is that an accurate sort of description of one of the key concerns in the bill?
O’MALLEY: Senator Obama, it is certainly a key concern that the — the way children are treated following their birth under these circumstances has been reported to be, without question, in my opinion, less than humane, and so this bill suggests that appropriate steps be taken to treat that baby as a — a citizen of the United States and afforded all the rights and protections it deserves under the Constitution of the United States.
OBAMA: Well, it turned out — that during the testimony a number of members who are typically in favor of a woman’s right to choose an abortion were actually sympathetic to some of the concerns that your — you raised and that were raised by witnesses in the testimony. And there was some suggestion that we might be able to craft something that might meet constitutional muster with respect to caring for fetuses or children who were delivered in this fashion. Unfortunately, this bill goes a little bit further, and so I just want to suggest, not that I think it’ll make too much difference with respect to how we vote, that this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny. Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a — a child, a nine-month-old — child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it — it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child. Then this would be an antiabortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional.
The second reason that it would probably be found unconstitutional is that this essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a previable child, or fetus, however way you want to describe it. Viability is the line that has been drawn by the Supreme Court to determine whether or not an abortion can or cannot take place. And if we’re placing a burden on the doctor that says you have to keep alive even a previable child as long as possible and give them as much medical attention as — as is necessary to try to keep that child alive, then we’re probably crossing the line in terms of unconstitutionality. Now, as I said before, this probably won’t make any difference. I recall the last time we had a debate about abortion, we passed a bill out of here. I suggested to Members of the Judiciary Committee that it was unconstitutional and it would be struck down by the Seventh Circuit. It was. I recognize this is a passionate issue, and so I — I won’t, as I said, belabor the point. I think it’s important to recognize though that this is an area where potentially we might have compromised and — and arrived at a bill that dealt with the narrow concerns about how a — a previable fetus or child was treated by a hospital. We decided not to do that. We’re going much further than that in this bill. As a consequence, I think that we will probably end up in court once again, as we often do, on this issue. And as a consequence, I’ll be voting Present.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
#14 you beat me to that
Rush said
we must stop accepting the templates and preises of the left
STOP
good one GMM
May 10th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
I wish McCain weren’t the other candidate. No appeal and no money. And no conservativism.
May 11th, 2008 at 1:13 am
You know what would be really cool? A shop with guns AND porn.
Sweet.
May 11th, 2008 at 7:39 am
“I wish McCain weren’t the other candidate. No appeal and no money. And no conservativism.”
How very true. Even here the passion (good and bad) is on the democratic side. I think about what Huckabee said at the New Hampshire debate, something like “its not enough to be against someone, you gotta be for someone.” People who are against a candidate but not for the other often just stay home. McCain loses under such a scenario.
What I also find troubling for McCain is that, while he is considered middle of the road on some issues, he is conceding major terrain to Obama (and in turn to the dems. Don’t forget about down ballot races). McCain has conceded global warming even though there are skeptics and even liberals agree any “fixes” will be costly. McCain has conceded immigration. Indeed he is the posterchild for amnesty. But most astonishingly, McCain has conceded Obama’s entire campaign theme: change. I heard it from his mouth “Americans want change!?” Are you kidding me? Obama and the media have basically made his name synonymous with change. McCain’s strategy is obviously to say Americans don’t want Obama’s change, but even the GOP admits voters certainly don’t want more Bush. That’s a tough sell for McCain.
May 11th, 2008 at 7:47 am
16. It’s typical Obama disingenuosity (is that a word?). The whole point of BAIPA is it requires doctors to care for babies that survive abortions, which kind of moots the whole “viability” issue. And I pretty well struggle how that impinges on a woman’s “right to choose,” since the whole act is triggered only after she had that right.
And while I might not run the ad in Massachusetts, in Southern OH and Southwest PA, even defending Roe is controversial.
May 11th, 2008 at 7:55 am
DaveG, now you’re talking. But you left out the word FREE.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Sean,
If, in the medical judgment of the attending physician, based on the particular facts of the case before him, there is not a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb, with or without artificial support, then said fetus is not deemed “viable” and the doctor has the right to end its potential life; even outside the womb.
Would it be more humane or less cruel to require doctors performing mid-to-late 2nd trimester abortions to clumsily dismember the fetus inside the uterus before extracting its individual body parts, risking imprecise actions in the process that could result in unnecessary suffering of the fetus or physical harm to the pregnant woman, than to dilate the woman’s cervix, pull the legs of a fetus out first and with no room for error, puncture the developing skull and brain, instantly, without inflicting pain, ending the potential life of a fetus?
I really cannot envision more than a negligible number of those in southern Ohio and southwest Pennsylvania, who find defending a women’s right to abortion “controversial”, being receptive to voting for the pro-choice Obama in the first place.
May 11th, 2008 at 11:11 am
The use of the word potential life is factually incorrect. I assume its a euphemism to get around the fact that a fetus is human and alive.
Something is either alive or dead at the macro level of a fetus. Aron, you frighten me. I am legitimately afraid for my blind wife because of folks like you.
If someone can justify in cold language the heinous act you described I don’t see how pushing the Untermenschen in furnaces is far off.
May 11th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Doug,
It goes without saying that the life process begins at conception. All fetuses are obviously human and are, as well, alive. The issue is the inability of the fetus to sustain life outside the womb. That is the “potential life” to which I refer.
Personally, I oppose 3rd term trimesters, because it is at that point, in my estimation, that the constitutional rights of the developing fetus trump those of the pregnant woman.
May 11th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Correction — That should read:
* Personally, I oppose 3rd trimester abortions*
May 11th, 2008 at 11:25 am
I didn’t mean to be personally confrontational. I was just taken aback and frightened by how you wrote what you wrote.
May 11th, 2008 at 11:50 am
“Personally, I oppose 3rd term trimesters, because it is at that point, in my estimation, that the constitutional rights of the developing fetus trump those of the pregnant woman.”
I was raised catholic and am personally against abortion, but I have always had a problem with laws defining specifically when a woman can terminate a pregnancy and its in part because of my reaction to Aron’s statement. I of course agree that a life has rights, but “potential” life inside of existing life is something beyond comprehension. There is no real brightline for when a fetus becomes viable outside the womb (sure at latter stages of a pregnancy but no brightline working backwards).
To me, the rule really must be either an outright ban or a ban only on late term pregnancies. I happen to prefer an outright ban except in cases of the life of the mother (rape and incest are not sufficient grounds).
May 11th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I believe that John McCain should remind Americans that 3 or 4 supreme court justices could be chosen in the next 4 years and that a McCain presidency will remove Roe v. Wade as an issue.
May 11th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Overruling Roe would not remove it as an issue, but merely return the issue to the states.
Yesterday I opined that McCain’s achilles heel is his ties to lobbyists. Well I just learned that the guy McCain put in charge of the GOP convention, Goodyear, has resigned because as a lobbyist he represented the Burma junta. Outside of Osama there is no one more despised right now that the Burmese generals who are not even allowing humanitarian aid. And what was Goodyear’s responsibilities? To improve the junta’s image. This is already hitting the liberal blogs and was on headline news.
May 11th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
RCP is featuring this item about the Keating Five on its “Best of Blogs”. The author notes that Obama surrogates are already bringing up Keating Five, and the author asserts that they should keep doing so.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/15498.html
Apologies if this is a duplicative post. My comments don’t seem to be going through…
May 11th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Link for #30
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/polinaut/archive/2008/05/gop_convention.shtml
May 11th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
23. The point is, the law only impacts medical decisions made post-abortion. This has absolutely nothing to do with a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.
May 11th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptMuch has been made of John McCain’s strong standing in national polls, and, more importantly, in polling from battleground states. Much has also been made of Barack Obama’s weakness among white voters, the poor judgment he has shown in … [...]
May 11th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Aron, the Obama comments you posted fail to qualify as “advocating upholding existing constitutional law — protecting a women’s right up to the point of viability” but instead is a argument for a radical expansion of the definition of a woman’s interest. The Supreme Court has never attempted to apply the balancing tests of Roe and Casey to a case where the child was already outside the womb. Post birth, there’s no more “women’s right” to protect, she no longer has any privacy interest whatsoever in the child, leaving the state alone with it’s interest in protecting life. Voting against BAIPA is very controversial, and has no case law to back it up. It’s not the marginal issue you seem to think it is.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Here’s another statement I found by Obama on the Illinois State Senate floor on April 4, 2002, explaining his position on BAIPA:
“This issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births. Because if there are children being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure that they’re looked after.”
May 12th, 2008 at 12:20 am
I wonder if he extends the same faith to employers. We don’t need to make sure they’re not discriminating because who would do that?
Not only is Obama a radical anti-child candidate, he’s willfully naive.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:50 am
I’d like to have confidence that doctors aren’t dealing prescription drugs under the table too, but we still make it illegal. Obama has not taken a simple pro-Roe, mainstream Democrat position - he’s put himself on the fringes and come up with pretty abysmal excuses for it if these are the best quotes you have. It’s a perfectly viable angle of policy attack.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:29 am
I think McCain wants to avoid the abortion issue because of his first wife who had an abortion while McCain was a POW. Obviously, the implication is it wasn’t McCain’s child.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:03 am
PabloZed,
I think McCain should avoid the abortion issue because, by attempting to shore up support among leery social conservatives, he risks alienating many of the very same independents and Democrats his campaign has sought to attract, and must retain if he is to win in November.
Furthermore, McCain made the following statements in 2000 that do not reflect the sentiment of a man committed to seeing Roe overturned as president:
“I’d love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.”
McCain reiterated that he would not have an abortion “litmus” test for a running mate or Supreme Court nominees. He added that while he ultimately favors repeal of Roe, “we all know, and it’s obvious, that if we repeal Roe v. Wade tomorrow, thousands of young American women would be performing illegal and dangerous operations.”
May 12th, 2008 at 9:18 am
PnGrata,
The law entrusts physicians with the authority to determine whether there is a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb.