McCain's Nosedive: Short-Term Tactics, Long-Term Problems
By James Carney and Michael Scherer
Time
Washington
With both national and battleground state polls showing John McCain losing ground against Barack Obama in recent weeks, the Republican presidential nominee is getting a lot of unsolicited advice from inside his own party. Some party professionals around the country are publicly calling on McCain to try to change the subject from the nation's faltering economy by becoming much more aggressive in his attacks against Obama. Go after the Illinois senator on his ties to his controversial former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, some urge, or his associations with convicted Chicago real estate developer Tony Rezko or former 60s radical Bill Ayers.
But even if such attacks could potentially give McCain a brief boost, it's not at all clear that they would help for the long haul. After all, since mid-summer, the Arizona senator has effectively dominated the day-to-day media narrative through a series of surprising, bold and, to some, reckless tactical moves designed to keep his opponent on the ropes. Whether he's been depicting Barack Obama as Paris Hilton, selecting the little known governor of Alaska as his running mate, manufacturing the lipstick-on-a-pig contretemps, or, most recently, "suspending" his campaign to tend to the financial crisis, McCain has consistently garnered the headlines and forced his opponent to respond.
Each of the bold moves brought McCain short-term political gain, throwing the often unflappable Obama off his stride and keeping the Republican nominee very much in the presidential hunt in a dismal year for Republicans. But the tactics also each contained the potential for long-term political costs by distracting from, or eroding, the central McCain message. By comparing Obama to a vacuous Hollywood starlet, McCain found a coherent critique of Obama, but relinquished his own ability to float above the political maw. By choosing Sarah Palin, he lit a grassfire of GOP enthusiasm, but risked undermining his ticket's claim of greater experience and putting "country first." By attacking Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment, the campaign clearly established itself as willing to engage in frivolous, small-ball distractions, a disposition that served McCain poorly when he pivoted and tried to portray himself as a sober statesman willing to halt his campaign to deal with the nation's financial meltdown. Most recently, he rolled out a new ad calling on a new spirit of bipartisanship and cooperation in the nation's capital, only a day after blaming the House of Representatives' defeat of the Administration's bailout bill on Democrats and Obama.
"The well of false sanctimony is not a bottomless pit," explains one Republican consultant. "I think they have reached the bottom of the well."
(Continued here.)
Time
Washington
With both national and battleground state polls showing John McCain losing ground against Barack Obama in recent weeks, the Republican presidential nominee is getting a lot of unsolicited advice from inside his own party. Some party professionals around the country are publicly calling on McCain to try to change the subject from the nation's faltering economy by becoming much more aggressive in his attacks against Obama. Go after the Illinois senator on his ties to his controversial former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, some urge, or his associations with convicted Chicago real estate developer Tony Rezko or former 60s radical Bill Ayers.
But even if such attacks could potentially give McCain a brief boost, it's not at all clear that they would help for the long haul. After all, since mid-summer, the Arizona senator has effectively dominated the day-to-day media narrative through a series of surprising, bold and, to some, reckless tactical moves designed to keep his opponent on the ropes. Whether he's been depicting Barack Obama as Paris Hilton, selecting the little known governor of Alaska as his running mate, manufacturing the lipstick-on-a-pig contretemps, or, most recently, "suspending" his campaign to tend to the financial crisis, McCain has consistently garnered the headlines and forced his opponent to respond.
Each of the bold moves brought McCain short-term political gain, throwing the often unflappable Obama off his stride and keeping the Republican nominee very much in the presidential hunt in a dismal year for Republicans. But the tactics also each contained the potential for long-term political costs by distracting from, or eroding, the central McCain message. By comparing Obama to a vacuous Hollywood starlet, McCain found a coherent critique of Obama, but relinquished his own ability to float above the political maw. By choosing Sarah Palin, he lit a grassfire of GOP enthusiasm, but risked undermining his ticket's claim of greater experience and putting "country first." By attacking Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment, the campaign clearly established itself as willing to engage in frivolous, small-ball distractions, a disposition that served McCain poorly when he pivoted and tried to portray himself as a sober statesman willing to halt his campaign to deal with the nation's financial meltdown. Most recently, he rolled out a new ad calling on a new spirit of bipartisanship and cooperation in the nation's capital, only a day after blaming the House of Representatives' defeat of the Administration's bailout bill on Democrats and Obama.
"The well of false sanctimony is not a bottomless pit," explains one Republican consultant. "I think they have reached the bottom of the well."
(Continued here.)
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