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CommentThe 1996 Republican presidential nominee was, and is, one of the great Americans of his generation. Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas was a war hero. He was well known and widely respected, with a reputation for integrity, candor, and humor--and also for the occasional temper flare and wiseacre remark. Though a Republican loyalist to the core, he had an independent streak and at times demonstrated rare political courage, such as in 1985, when he bucked President Reagan and led Senate Republicans in a brave, although ultimately futile, effort to restrain entitlement spending. Few if any other Republicans were as attractive to moderates and independents.
You know the rest of the story. In 1996, Dole got shellacked.
Last week's news that Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is retooling his campaign came not a moment too soon for those who would like to see him governing the country instead of hawking Viagra. The candidate, Republicans groused, had dawdled after nailing down the nomination, and then had failed to turn a grab bag of speeches and proposals into a coherent message.
Faster reflexes, a clearer message, and more emphasis on the economy may help. But McCain's biggest need is to recover an asset that so far he has seemed to work hard to undermine: his independence from Republican orthodoxy and President Bush.
McCain, obviously, has formidable strengths, beginning with a stellar biography and a strong brand. He benefits from being a center-right politician in a center-right country; today, as in 2004, self-described conservatives outnumber liberals by more than 10 percentage points. Polls show that the public perceives him to be closer to the center than is Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Not least, McCain offers superior experience and expertise in foreign policy and security. Although recent polls give Obama the advantage in dealing with domestic issues, McCain gets higher marks on international affairs and, especially, fighting terrorism. A Gallup Poll last month found 80 percent of respondents saying that McCain can handle the responsibilities of being commander-in-chief, compared with 55 percent saying the same of Obama. If 2008 were 2004, when national security and international affairs were foremost in the public mind, McCain could expect to replicate Bush's narrow victory.
But, of course, 2008 is not 2004. In the 2004 exit poll, Republicans stood at parity with Democrats, with 37 percent of the public claiming affinity with each party (26 percent identified themselves as independents). Last month, by contrast, two polls (by Gallup and Time) found self-identified Democrats outnumbering Republicans 37 percent to 28 percent, a yawning 9-point gap. Add independents who lean toward one party or the other (and who tend to vote their partisan leanings), and the Democratic advantage grows larger still, because independents are trending blue.
"So McCain's only hope is to reach into the Democratic pot and pull out a couple of plums," says William Galston, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution and a former Clinton administration official. "And there's no way he can do that by hugging Bush as closely as he has." Indeed, McCain's embrace of Bush and Bushism has been the most mystifying aspect of his campaign. And the most potentially suicidal.
The polls show that three issues are foremost in voters' minds this year, and none of them, sadly for Republicans, is terrorism. Well out in front is the economy, including rising gas prices. Iraq is in second place. A distant but persistent third is health care.
On all three of those issues, McCain has cleaved close to Bush. Although he was once a critic of Bush's Iraq strategy, today there is no daylight between them. On the economy, McCain follows Bush's lead by placing tax cuts (unpaid-for) at the center of his program. (When Obama challenges him in this fall's debates to "name one major Bush economic policy--just one, senator--that you think is wrong," what will McCain say?)
On health care, too, McCain adapts the Bush model, prioritizing competition and cost over coverage, a strategy that many swing voters will regard as missing the point. (An ABC News/Washington Post poll last month found respondents preferring "providing health care coverage for all Americans, even if it means raising taxes" over "holding down taxes, even if it means some Americans do not have health care coverage" by a ratio of better than 2-to-1.)
It's true that McCain's policy papers and speeches make any number of fine-print departures from Bushism. Only on global warming, however, has McCain really lit out on an independent path. In any case, the fine print amounts to little next to the boldface headlines, and those have found McCain repeatedly sounding like a rerun of Bush in 2004, sometimes gratuitously.
When Bush denounced negotiating with "terrorists and radicals" as appeasement, McCain rushed to agree instead of seizing the opportunity to show a more moderate side. When Obama praised a Supreme Court decision granting habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees, McCain's senior foreign-policy adviser denounced the Democrat's "perfect manifestation of a September 10 mind-set," instead of pointing to McCain's leadership in creating legal protections for detainees, over Bush's objections.
Seeming to parrot Bush wouldn't matter so much if the voters were happier with Bush or the status quo; but they want change. According to Gallup, 68 percent of the public professes concern that McCain's policies would be too similar to Bush's. Indeed, almost half of Republicans profess this concern; even they have had it with Bushism.
Nor would being McSame matter so much if the Democratic nominee were allowing himself to drift too far left for too long, as for a while Obama seemed to be doing. But Obama has recently moved aggressively, even flamboyantly, toward the middle, for example by supporting gun rights, faith-based initiatives, and federal wiretapping powers. Obama shows every sign of understanding the two signal facts of the 2008 race: It is a change election, and it will be won or lost in the center.
Barring an Obama implosion or divine intervention, the contours of 2008 are becoming pretty clear, and, as Galston points out, they look a bit like the contours of 1980. In that year, the race was close as long as it pitted a discredited incumbent against an untested and risky challenger. In the final days, however, Ronald Reagan did well in a debate against President Carter. Once swing voters decided that Reagan passed the presidential plausibility test, they abandoned Carter en masse and gave the Republicans an epochal mandate.
This year, if McCain runs as Bush, he puts himself in Jimmy Carter's shoes, which ought to give him sweaty feet. If Obama never quite crosses the credibility threshold, McCain might eke out the narrow victory that seemed within Carter's reach. But if Obama does cross that threshold, then McCain's loss may be as comprehensive and devastating as Carter's. On the other hand, if McCain runs as McCain--as an independent-minded change agent, rather than as the de facto incumbent--he has a shot at a decisive win if Obama falters, and a narrow win even if Obama runs strongly.
To run as McCain, McCain cannot just attack Obama. "Offering solutions, not defining the opponent, is the key in the current environment," says David Winston, a Republican pollster and strategist. "He's got to be perceived as his own person. He's got to do a clear break with the past."
This does not mean explicitly attacking Bush, something no Republican can do. It does mean exchanging the Republicans' trademark bipolar politics for triangulation. McCain would seek to differentiate himself from both Obama on the one hand and Bush on the other. This could involve explaining, for instance, why it is wrong to negotiate with adversaries unconditionally but also wrong to dismiss negotiation as appeasement; why tax increases aren't the answer to the country's economic problems but tax cuts aren't enough; why neither unconditional withdrawal nor unconditional engagement is the answer in Iraq; why it is foolish to talk as if the war on terrorism were either a military or a civilian problem when in fact it is both; why any successful health reform must deal with both coverage and cost.
It so happens that these and other triangulated messages are not only better politics but better policy. There are a lot of right answers to be found in the space between Bush and Obama. It also happens that McCain, by temperament and background, is well suited to proffer them. The next few months will determine whether he can break away from the Jovian gravity of Bush-era Republicanism; or whether, in what history will mark as a Doleful ending to a great career, McCain's independence will fail him when he needs it most.
This article appeared in the Saturday, July 12, 2008 edition of National Journal.
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