Laying the groundwork for a mandate

Steve Benen
Washington Monthly

As has been the case for quite a while, Barack Obama lit into John McCain in his acceptance speech last night, but not in personal terms. It highlighted the key distinction of the two campaign styles -- McCain has gone after Obama on character, integrity, and patriotism, while Obama has gone after McCain on policy, substance, and vision.

But this is about more than just competing approaches to character assassination, it's also about laying the groundwork for actually governing. Mark Schmitt had a very sharp take on last night's address:

Letting the Republicans go after Obama in all the ways we know they will, while leaving McCain's persona unchallenged is a huge risk. It calls on voters to make a fairly nuanced distinction between the candidate and the agenda.

But there's another lesson in George W. Bush's 2004 victory over Kerry by demolishing Kerry's personal reputation: It left Kerry's agenda untouched. As Bush discovered from the day after his 2005 inauguration, he had no mandate for conservative policies such as Social Security privatization because he had not run on them.

But if it succeeds, it will have the effect of giving the next president exactly what George W. Bush didn't have: A mandate. The voters will have rejected not just McCain, but the entire economic and foreign policy agenda of conservatism. And that's as important as winning the election, perhaps more important.

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