Tag: McCain

Experience Matters

The McCain campaign has one of the most effective campaign ads I’ve ever seen. On the day of Sen. Obama’s acceptance speech, the McCain campaign offers this reminder that despite the Senator’s historic rise, he is simply not prepared to lead this country in a time of great challenges:

Obama’s own words serve as a reminder that the Presidency is not a time for on-the-job training, especially not now. Obama’s instincts are wrong. He was wrong on the surge. His instincts were wrong on Georgia. He made key blunders in threatening Pakistan with a U.S. invasion. He can give a compelling speech, but compelling speeches won’t be enough to safeguard Ukraine from Russian interference. Compelling speeches will not stabilize the fragile situation in Pakistan. Compelling speeches will not win the battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Actions speak louder than words, and had the U.S. followed Sen. Obama’s advice, Iraq would not be stabilizing, we would have shown Russia a sign of great weakness, and our foreign policy would return to the fecklessness of the Carter years.

Obama has neither the experience nor the instincts to lead. Sen. McCain has both. Sen. Obama deserves congratulations for breaking a historic record and achieving much. What he does not deserve is to be the Commander-in-Chief of this great nation.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse says this ad is “devastating”—it is.

The Case For Lieberman

Bill Kristol makes the case for Sen. Joe Lieberman as McCain’s VP:

Lieberman could hold his own against Biden in a debate. He would reinforce McCain’s overall message of foreign policy experience and hawkishness. He’s a strong and disciplined candidate.

But he is pro-abortion rights, and having been a Democrat all his life, he has a moderately liberal voting record on lots of issues.

Now as a matter of governance, there’s no reason to think this would much matter. McCain has made clear his will be a pro-life administration. And as a one-off, quasi-national-unity ticket, with Lieberman renouncing any further ambition to run for the presidency, a McCain-Lieberman administration wouldn’t threaten the continuance of the G.O.P. as a pro-life party. In other areas, no one seriously thinks the policies of a McCain-Lieberman administration would be appreciably different from those, say, of a McCain-Pawlenty administration.

What Kristol doesn’t seem to understand is that the pro-life position of evangelical and Catholic voters is not a political one. It’s a moral position. They believe as a first principle that the termination of an innocent human life is morally unconscionable and government should not sanction such atrocities. A stridently pro-abortion candidate is going to be a non-starter, or at the very least will have a very tough sell.

Sen. Lieberman is a brave man and a patriot. He was right on the war, and his steadfastness is greatly appreciated. However, he is a doctrinaire liberal on nearly every other issue, and in a close Senate it is possible that he could break a tie vote. He should have a seat in a McCain administration, but not as the number two man.

McCain Goes Viral

Barack Obama was supposed to be the candidate that was the master of the viral video, but McCain’s campaign has been managing to more than hold their own. Their latest YouTube sensation continues to tweak the messianic air of the Obama campaign by using their own words against them:

The Obama campaign, which should by all rights be sweeping the floor with McCain, is floundering. The reason why is partially due to the fact that Obama is collapsing under the weight of his own hagiography. People are sick and tired of him already, and if his Invesco Field performance next week is half as nakedly self-congratulatory as expected, one wonders if Obama might leave the convention worse than when he arrived.

In the Democratic primaries, the late breakers tended to break against Obama. If that holds true in the general election, Obama may be in serious trouble.

I’ve been bearish on the prospects of the McCain campaign for most of the summer. After McCain’s confident performance at the Saddleback Forum last week and the movement of the poll numbers, I’m not so sure that when the cards are laid on the table, Obama’s hand might not have been as strong as everyone thought.

The GOP And The “Politics Of Aspiration”

Steven Greenhut has an excellent editorial on what the GOP needs to do to recapture the credibility they’ve hemorrhaged over the last few years. The message is one that the GOP should take to heart: voters want something to vote for. Obama’s empty “change” message is resonating, and the GOP has to offer substantive change in response.

For example, he offers this message on taxes:

You pay plenty in taxes already. It’s not just about the cash, but about freedom. You need to invest in your business, pay your mortgage and pay for your kids’ education. Government already has too much money, and it spends it on mission-creep rather than the ‘public good.’ By the way, we are NOT going to increase taxes on your grandchildren by engaging in reckless debt spending, either.

That is the sort of message that the GOP needs to be sending. Confidence in government is at an all-time low—the Democratic argument that government is fundamentally broken, so let’s have more of it should be a non-starter. Obama’s great personal magnetism betrays yet another out-of-touch liberal.

But if the Republicans think that calling a spade a spade will win them the election, they’re dead wrong. Sticking Obama with the “liberal” label—even if richly deserved and completely accurate—is not going to be enough to swing the election. The GOP needs to have a real agenda.

Even though conservatives are balking at Sen. McCain’s efforts to speak out on global warming—and for good reason—at least he’s trying to set the agenda. The Lexington Project is the sort of forward-looking strategy that voters are looking for. The GOP needs to be a party of ideas, and the party leadership has to realize that calling the other guys names won’t work for them any more than it worked for the Democrats in 2002 and 2004. We need not only to say that we have conservative values, but make conservative values relevant to the American voter.

Why is a market approach better for health care? Because, as Mr. Greenhut explains, markets lower costs and make goods and services more available. But that isn’t enough, even though it’s true. What the GOP has always had a problem doing is taking those facts and turning them into a narrative. A market is an abstract concept… people respond to things that are within their own experience. The right narrative is that market-driven health care is like going to the neighborhood grocery store while government-run health care is like standing in a bread line. While that’s a rough analogy, it’s effective.

In a fair world, being a staunch conservative would be enough to win a Presidential election. This world isn’t fair, and politics is especially unfair. It is not enough to parade one’s conservative bona fides and call the other guy a liberal extremist. The way to win an election is to play, as Mr Greenhut puts it, to the “politics of aspiration.” For all the talk of the greatness of Ronald Reagan, the GOP seems to be having a tough time capturing the spirit of American optimism that motivated his campaign.

There is one thing that Mr. Greenhut is wrong about, though. This country shouldn’t be punished for the GOP’s transgressions. An Obama administration would be an unmitigated disaster for this nation. We don’t need another radical Supreme Court justice putting their whims above the rule of law. We don’t need higher taxes during an economic downturn. We can’t have radicals further using the machinery of the administrative state to reduce our freedoms even more. That doesn’t even touch on issues of free trade, energy policy, and other critical matters.

The GOP needs to get its act together. Years of fiscal irresponsibility and institutional incompetence have taken their toll on the Republican Party. The stakes in this election are too high not to embrace an agenda of substantive change. The GOP needs to not only stand on its values, but make those values accessible to those who don’t yet share them.

The GOP can win on the “politics of aspiration”—so long as they aspire to something higher than just skating by.

McCain’s Climate Change Plan: Great Politics, Terrible Policy

Scott Johnson has a deeply skeptical look at Sen. McCain’s new “climate change” policy

. From a standpoint of policy, that skepticism is well warranted. The political story, however, is entirely different.

The political reality is this: global warming concerns are part of the political landscape now. Too many voters have bought into the hype to stake a position on the theory that climate change doesn’t matter in this election. While that is bad science, that is also the political reality the GOP faces. For that matter, even if there is no man-made global warming, there’s no reason why America shouldn’t be looking ahead to an age of increasing scarcity of oil. The more power America gets domestically from renewable resources, the fewer petrodollars flow into the hands of two-bit tyrants like Hugo Chavez. Some “green” policies make sense for other reasons than environmental hysteria.

The problem with the McCain approach is that it gets the politics right, but makes for atrocious public policy. For example, a “cap and trade” system would necessitate a massive new government bureaucracy and raise America’s energy prices. The Congressional Budget Office has found that the current Lieberman-Warner bill amounts to a trillion dollar tax increase in a time when Americans are already finding it hard to pay for energy. Even more troubling, this tax would be incredibly regressive, its impacts adding more stress to families barely able to pay for heat and fuel.

Republicans should have a plan that reduces our dependence on sources of energy that produce pollution. However, that should not mean abandoning political principles or the rules of basic economics. The GOP should push for more clean nuclear power, tax credits for research and development of clean fuel sources, and should embrace something like Bob Zubrin’s flex-fuel plan (using cellulosic ethanol rather than burning what we eat). There are plenty of economically viable ways for the U.S. to “go green,” but we need policymakers willing to support those sound policies.

The GOP has good reason to grumble at McCain’s energy policy, but the fact that it talks about climate change is not it. It would be nice for more politicians to stand against the bad science behind the global warming movement, but in an election year you have to pick and choose your battles, and this year the GOP needs to have an energy policy on the table to compete on this issue.

John McCain Puts Foot In Mouth

Ed Morrissey rightfully goes after Sen. John McCain for his comments that pork-barrel spending caused the I-35W bridge collapse. It’s one thing to say that money spent on pork can’t be used for better purposes, like infrastructure repair. That’s a legitimate argument. However, money had nothing to do with the I-35W bridge collapse, either a lack of it or too much of it. The problem was that when the bridge was built in the 1960s it had a critical design flaw that wasn’t identified until after the collapse.

It’s bad enough when Democrats try to politicize the collapse—it does not behoove Republicans to do the same.

UPDATE: McCain is backing away from his comment, as well he should. Earmark reform is a serious issue—it doesn’t need to be tied to an unrelated bridge collapse to be good policy.

Good News For Team McCain

The AP reports that John McCain has been able to consolidate the Republican base and is even winning some independents and Democrats as well:

Partly thanks to an increasingly likable image, the Republican presidential candidate has pulled even with the two Democrats still brawling for their party’s nomination, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo news poll released Thursday. Just five months ago — before either party had winnowed its field — the survey showed people preferred sending an unnamed Democrat over a Republican to the White House by 13 percentage points.

Of those who have moved toward McCain, about two-thirds voted for President Bush in 2004 but are now unhappy with him, including many independents who lean Republican. The remaining one-third usually support Democrats but like McCain anyway.

This isn’t all that surprising—McCain has always had strong appeal with independents and some Democrats. In an election season where the Democratic Party is deeply and bitterly divided McCain’s strength among conservative Democrats and independents may be his greatest single asset.

Of course, McCain cannot just rest on his laurels. The American electorate needs a candidate who can provide real solutions to our problems. Sen. McCain must take the lead on healthcare, the environment, fuel prices, and the war. His plan to offer a “gas tax holiday” this summer is the sort of populist plan that could have broad appeal, but Republican policymakers need to do more than offer various tax credits. McCain’s already come out with some promising policy positions on issues like taxes and the environment, but he needs to do more. There’s plenty of time to do that (and that can’t really happen until the Democrats stop sucking all the oxygen out of the room), but it has to be done.

With the GOP base supporting McCain, he can start to reach out to independents at a time when the Democrats are fighting over the liberal base. In a year where the GOP “brand” is hardly in good shape, McCain’s “maverick” cred is extremely helpful. However, McCain will have to walk a tight line between appealing to independents without alienating conservatives. The fact that he’s running against two dyed-in-the-wool liberals will help him, but it won’t get him into office. Make no mistake, even though McCain is in a very strong position right now, this will be a long, hard fight. McCain will need to take some strong substantive positions on key issues, which he so far has not done. The American middle class is worried, and McCain needs to be able to speak to those worries and give them something to vote on other than biography.

The Smears Begin To Fly

Sen. Jay Rockefeller managed to put his foot firmly in his mouth today, forcing a subsequent flurry of retractions and apologies. Sen. Rockefeller comment?

“McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit,” Rockefeller told the newspaper, which published the article on the interview Tuesday. “What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues,” he is quoted saying.

Sen. Rockefeller is not only issuing a smear, but he’s also clearly has no idea about what actually happened in Vietnam. For one, Sen. McCain was shot down when his plane was at a very low altitude—4,500 feet. The purpose of flying that low? To avoid collateral damage to civilians.

Laser-guided “missiles” were not invented until long after the end of Vietnam.

Sen. McCain, of course, spent years as a POW at the Hanoi Hilton. Undoubtedly he was quite well aware of what was happening on the ground.

This kind of lazy, offensive, and stupid slur is only the beginning of the sort of smears we can expect to see throughout this election season. We’ve heard for years how supposedly some sinister Republican operatives smeared McCain in the 2000 South Carolina race—by November, all those attacks will likely seem tame in comparison.

Not only that, but radio shock jock Ed Schultz accused Sen. McCain of being a “warmonger” in the presence of Sen. Obama during the North Dakota Democratic Convention. That smear is already the predominant one flying around the extremist left-wing blogosphere. The problem with that smear is that Sen. McCain knows more than anyone what the horrors of war really are, having been tortured nearly to death several times while a POW—and not only that, it’s hard to argue that Sen. McCain doesn’t care about the troops when one of them is his son, and another is likely to serve in Iraq soon. If that’s the plan of attack that the Democrats will have, expect the American people to see them as the desperate and disgusting smears that they are.

Do the Democrats honestly think that this sort of juvenile rhetoric actually persuades people? Or that it doesn’t persuade them to think less of those who use it? If the Democrats want to attack McCain on substance for his support of the war, that’s one thing. That’s a legitimate argument to make. But so far we have Sen. Rockefeller’s ignorant smear, Ed Schultz’ “warmonger” slur, and the Obama campaign constantly misleading the American public by saying that McCain wants there to be “100 years” of war in Iraq. None of those attacks are factual, all of them are misleading, and none of them have an ounce of substance to them.

If this is going to be the sort of rhetoric we can expect throughout this election campaign, then it will signal a return to politics as usual and the rhetoric of personal destruction rather than the substance that America deserves.

UPDATE: The Columbia Journalism Review has a piece on why Obama is distorting McCain’s “100 years” comment.

McCain/Romney ’08?

Mark Hemingway makes the case for a McCain/Romney ticket. To be honest, I think that’s the smartest choice for McCain—provided he can bury the hatchet. McCain needs someone who is young, appeals to conservatives, and can speak convincingly on the economy. Romney is someone who can deliver on all of those accounts. To be honest, Romney has always struck me as a bit of a technocrat, and the Vice Presidency is the best office for someone of that persuasion.

Romney’s biggest disadvantage is that he doesn’t really deliver any new states to McCain—but that seems less of a concern in modern electoral politics. For that matter, I don’t really see a McCain/Pawlenty ticket handing Minnesota to McCain either (although it’s within the realm of possibility).

What Romney really delivers is some straight talk on the economy—and the GOP needs to get an economic plan together or they will get creamed in the fall. Romney has the portfolio to do that—the man is a turnaround expert, and the US economy badly needs a turnaround. He comes with some baggage, but not enough to make him a distraction.

I don’t know if the McCain camp is serious considering Romney as a VP or not, but on a number of levels that may be one of his best choices to unite conservatives and to give him some much-needed economic credibility.

Rassmussen: McCain Ahead

With my usual caveats about the utility of polling this far out from an election, Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll shows John McCain well ahead of either Clinton or Obama. McCain leads Obama 50-41 and Clinton 49-42. This sample showed Clinton narrowly ahead of Obama as well.

What does this mean? This far out, not much. However, it does indicate that McCain was the right choice for the GOP. After eight years of Bush, the GOP needs a figure that can reach out to independents. It was the shift in independent voters to the Democrats that made 2006 such a bloodbath for Republicans. McCain, even though conservatives have their issues with him, is someone who can attract independent-minded voters. In some ways, all the conservative backlash to McCain may help him—conservatives aren’t going to hand the election over to either Hillary or Obama, and the conservative backlash makes it more difficult to paint McCain as an extremist. Independent voters want someone who will exercise independent judgement—and McCain’s maverick rep helps him there. He wasn’t a “maverick” because it made him popular, or he would have pulled a Hagel on Iraq, he was a “maverick” because he was doing what he thought was right. Independent voters want to see that in a candidate, and McCain has that strong appeal.

On the Democratic side, Clinton is down, but not out. She’s going to fight on, and while some argue she has no realistic chance at the nomination, that isn’t going to stop her. In essence, the Democrats are stuck with a Catch-22. If they nominate Clinton, people will walk away from the party, and someone like Nader could break 10%. If they nominate Obama, they’ll marginalize older voters (who vote in droves) in the hopes of attracting younger voters (who eventually grow up and become Republicans). Plus, if Obama gets the nod it means key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania could be in McCain’s column. The electoral math doesn’t favor Obama—no Democrat will win Georgia or Mississippi. Winning Kansas and Nebraska is great if your goal is to beat Clinton in pledged delegates, but those states are so likely to vote Republican in November that they’re virtually irrelevant to the general election.

I would hate to be a Democratic superdelegate right now. There’s no good answer: either vote for Hillary in the hopes that she’ll peel off a state like Ohio from McCain and squeak in, or vote for Obama in the hopes that the Electoral College math will somehow add up. Neither of those options are particularly good ones.

At the beginning of the year, having a Republican nominee running ahead and the Democrats in a brutal internecine war would have been one of the least likely outcomes of this race. Then again, perhaps that’s why politics can be so interesting to follow…