Letters to the Editor
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What Now McCain? Only One Challange Left
Now John McCain is one of only three people in the world who will be the next President of the United States.
The others still have an internecine battle to resolve. And though they both might prefer to launch their missiles exclusively at Johnny Mac, each will find it necessary to direct at least some torpedoes at each other.
Sen. McCain, however, for the first time no longer has to compete with members of his own party. He can safely adopt the Reagan Commandment of "Never speak ill of a fellow Republican."
He now has one goal and one goal only---winning the general election in 10 long months from now, essentially an eternity in politics.
What does he know today with virtual certainty?
1. He will be the nominee of the Republican Party.
2. Either Clinton or Obama will be the Democratic nominee.
3. He lacks strong support from the conservative right of his own party.
4. He is considered experienced, well informed and in command of National Security issues, perhaps so in foreign policy issues in general, though there is little evidence that beyond the boundaries of his party the general electorate agrees with his positions in these matters.
5. He has been essentially mute regarding domestic policy, including its largest component, the overall economy. It has not been an area of great personal or professional interest to him and one would assume he knows that better than anyone. His sundry presidential campaigns have made that apparent to the voters as well. He's been a one-trick-pony.
6. Voters have found his semi-rumpled, shoot-from-the-hip, take no guff personality attractive, perhaps because it is in such stark contrast to the typical politician's. He either purposely lets his personal imperfections show, or they are such a dominant part of him that he can't fully mask them from public view.
7. John McCain will not have the luxury of running against an incumbent president of the opposition party. (See later comments regarding Reagan's campaign vs. Carter.)
For brevity's sake, we'll terminate this list here.
Relatively speaking, McCain's got some time on his hands now to do other things than outright campaigning day after endless day. He's not about to repeat Rudy's cataclysmically ineffective strategy of hiding in the bushes, keeping his powder dry until he sees the whites of his enemies' eyes; but some non-camera time is available to him over the next several months leading up to the convention.
Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter with simultaneous attacks on both the domestic and national security/foreign policy fronts. And back then the targets were so large--17% inflation, zero-growth economy, Iran hostages, Soviet threat--that he couldn't miss. He did not run as a one-trick-pony, he was a candidate with a clear vision of the job of the president, agree with him or not. And he was running against a seemingly overwhelmed incumbent of the other party.
Unfortunately for McCain, and as the economic news becomes more negative and more complicated in the months ahead, George Bush is rapidly taking on some Carteresque characteristics. (The botched War on Terror, the Keystone Cops adventure in Iraq, minus the humour and the multifaceted shakiness of the economy.) This time around, it's the republicans who have to defend the record of their incumbent.
Shoring up the ranks of his own party, while a challenge of sorts, will more likely be done by the words of his democratic opponents rather than McCain himself. A pithy speech or two by Clinton or Obama will do the trick.
McCain must at least project that he has real interest in and concern with the state of the economy. It's way too late for him to transform himself into the dual-barreled Reagan who was as effective in promoting his domestic agenda as his foreign.
McCain need not be nominated for the Nobel Prize in economics by September to project some knowledge and concern in that area. And he's unlikely to come up with anything as catchy and simplistic as Supply Side economics as a slogan. But he must show a reasonable command of those issues, or have a VP nominee whose domestic policy credentials are beyond dispute.
He won the nomination by perching atop a double pronged foundation of 1) his indisputable, deeply felt interest in National Security matters, even if his positions thereon were open to question by some in his own party, and 2) his gutsy, if erratic, bulldog personality. [And he's proven under the most unimaginable conditions that he sure is a bulldog.]
That's not a solid or broad enough foundation to win the general election....Add to that having to defend the record of Jimmy Carter--oops, I mean George Bush--and John McCain may have a task before him more daunting, in a much less painful way, than his years of captivity in Nam.