Monday, October 13, 2008

JOHN MCCAIN, SARAH PALIN

Good-Cop, Bad-Cop Will Not Win This Campaign For McCain

This was a particularly frustrating weekend to be a Republican, a conservative, or a McCain supporter.

The UK papers tend to have a little looser standards for sourcing – remember the headlines about McCain’s “cancer scare” from a bruise on his head – but a lot of this story, indicating dissention in the McCain ranks about how to go after Obama – is pretty believable. The article suggests some around McCain would prefer "an honorable defeat" than make a campaign that is out of the senator's character, while Sarah Palin thinks that attacking Obama's character is fair game.

Palin’s already publicly second-guessed the McCain campaign’s decision to pull out of Michigan (albeit in a light-hearted way). McCain had made long-ago comments about Jeremiah Wright being out of bounds, but Palin has discussed Obama’s relationship with the pastor famous for "God d*** America."

And when a guy keeps reiterating that he would rather lose an election than lose a war, and that he wants to win in “the best way, not the worst way,” it’s easy to conclude there are certain things he’s just not willing to do to win.

There are two problems with this approach. One, is that it seems McCain — and notice I say the candidate, not the campaign — is more or less assenting to the MSM’s view of what is in bounds and what is out of bounds in terms of relevance and good taste in this campaign. The MSM thinks that Ayers, Wright, Rezko, the theme of the “Celebrity” ad, ACORN voter fraud efforts, the Democrats' blind eye to the mismanagement of Fannie and Freddie, and basically any other story that might actually harm Obama's standing in the polls is out of bounds.

The second problem is that it’s tough to dabble in the controversial topics. (And I understand the argument that many voters only pay attention in the final month, but when you bring up Ayers, etc. with four or five weeks to go, when you're behind, it is a near-guarantee that the strategy will be painted as a desperation move.) You either have to insist that the whole lot of Obama's associates — Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, Meeks, Pfleger, Rezko, Nadhmi Auchi, Rashid Khalidi, Alexi Giannoulias — are revealing about the candidate's character, judgment, and worthy of discussion, and defend that argument full-throatedly... or you can't go there. You certainly can't back down in the face of media criticism; that back-and-forth implicitly validates the media criticism.

The current circumstance - where the bottom half of the ticket seems to have no hesitation, while the top of the ticket tells audiences his opponent is "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States"... it creates the worst of both worlds. The press paints Palin as the ruthless smear artist, while the base concludes McCain is too addicted to Senate courtesy to really make the case against his opponent.

Having said all of that, this is a particularly inopportune moment to be making the associations argument, as the country is riveted by the economic crisis. (Of course, as I write this, the stock market is skyrocketing.) Once Americans feel like their banks, their savings, their retirement accounts, their 401(k)s, and their economic futures are no longer in dire peril, they may be receptive to arguments on other topics.

10/13 10:38 AMShare