McCain and His Shadow
New York Times
By Ron Klain
Ron Klain was a member of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign policy and debate preparation staff.
While Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have spent the week moving their battle from Pennsylvania to Indiana and North Carolina, John McCain has been fighting a different foe: the dark overhang that the Bush presidency casts on his campaign.
The question of how a presidential nominee deals with a sitting president of his own party is one of the trickiest dilemmas in a campaign — a challenge that is underappreciated by most observers. It is no accident that in the elections since World War II when a candidate has tried to succeed the sitting president of his own party (1952, 1960, 1968, 1988 and 2000), that candidate has failed to capture the White House four out of five times. Elements of Richard Nixon’s inability to escape Dwight Eisenhower’s leadership within his party, Hubert Humphrey’s link to Lyndon Johnson’s unpopular war and Al Gore’s struggle with how to use Bill Clinton on the stump all are present in the complex dance that John McCain is undertaking vis-à-vis George Bush in 2008.
As a result, Senator McCain is spending the week visiting what he calls the “forgotten places” of America. Much as George H.W. Bush’s 1988 declaration that he wanted to have a “kinder, gentler” presidency caused Nancy Reagan to ask, “kinder than who?”, John McCain’s “forgotten places” tour poses the question: forgotten by whom? The places on Senator McCain’s itinerary — Selma, Youngstown and the Ninth Ward of New Orleans — certainly haven’t been forgotten by Democrats: the legacy of the civil rights movement, the economic angst of the industrial heartland and the consequences of the federal failure when Katrina struck have been extensively discussed by Senators Clinton and Obama this year. No, Mr. McCain’s message is inescapable: the places he is visiting are ones that George Bush has forgotten. His tour this week is an attempt to establish some distance between himself and an unpopular president.
(Continued here.)
By Ron Klain
Ron Klain was a member of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign policy and debate preparation staff.
While Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have spent the week moving their battle from Pennsylvania to Indiana and North Carolina, John McCain has been fighting a different foe: the dark overhang that the Bush presidency casts on his campaign.
The question of how a presidential nominee deals with a sitting president of his own party is one of the trickiest dilemmas in a campaign — a challenge that is underappreciated by most observers. It is no accident that in the elections since World War II when a candidate has tried to succeed the sitting president of his own party (1952, 1960, 1968, 1988 and 2000), that candidate has failed to capture the White House four out of five times. Elements of Richard Nixon’s inability to escape Dwight Eisenhower’s leadership within his party, Hubert Humphrey’s link to Lyndon Johnson’s unpopular war and Al Gore’s struggle with how to use Bill Clinton on the stump all are present in the complex dance that John McCain is undertaking vis-à-vis George Bush in 2008.
As a result, Senator McCain is spending the week visiting what he calls the “forgotten places” of America. Much as George H.W. Bush’s 1988 declaration that he wanted to have a “kinder, gentler” presidency caused Nancy Reagan to ask, “kinder than who?”, John McCain’s “forgotten places” tour poses the question: forgotten by whom? The places on Senator McCain’s itinerary — Selma, Youngstown and the Ninth Ward of New Orleans — certainly haven’t been forgotten by Democrats: the legacy of the civil rights movement, the economic angst of the industrial heartland and the consequences of the federal failure when Katrina struck have been extensively discussed by Senators Clinton and Obama this year. No, Mr. McCain’s message is inescapable: the places he is visiting are ones that George Bush has forgotten. His tour this week is an attempt to establish some distance between himself and an unpopular president.
(Continued here.)
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