In a recent post, I talked about how much more comfortable the post-Reagan Republican Party is with the artifice and theater of politics - narratives, TV ads, message events, scripted speeches. They are much more conscious, and accepting, of the notion that politics is many things, but it is also a show - it needs to play well on TV.
The McCain campaign has been remarkable to watch. It has been one of the worst performers of any campaign for President in modern times. It is operating in one of the most difficult environments Republicans have seen in 40 years. McCain's personal narrative has been severely damaged by his sacrificing of virtually all of his major beliefs and principles in his final quest to win the Republican nomination. But yet here they sit, even, or perhaps ahead, of one of the most compelling political figures American has ever produced. How have they done it?
They've done it by essentially running a television and free media campaign completely untethered from reality, from the responsibility of governing, from the truth. From Paris Hilton to the Bridge to Nowhere to the claim that McCain supports renewable energy to the blanket over the belly bump to Sex Ed for Kindergartners to "Victory in Iraq" to the Lipstick fiasco, the lion in winter, John McCain, has become a silly tool for a bunch of over-caffeinated conservative operatives who clearly see American politics as a video game for grownups. His acceptance speech last week did not even try to lay out a real plan for where he wanted to take the country. They are not even trying to make serious arguments about issues, governing, our future. Each day in their speeches, their almost daily ads and videos, and their events, they attempt to keep writing this next chapter of their imagined world they've fallen in love with - avoiding at all costs letting the real world get in the way of this beautiful campaign. Just in the last few weeks, they've had to pull two ads. And almost none of these videos they've produced have talked about what they plan on doing next year.
This week, buoyed by their strong Convention, these conservative Wizards of Oz amped up their game. Videos came faster and more furiously, the subjects wilder and more over the top, until they created one that illegally used the words and image of iconic mother Katie Couric. And bang! Someone, at least for a few hours, pulled the plug on their video game and sent these kids up to their room.
Where this all goes, I don't know. But the children of Rove now running the McCain campaign grew up in an Administration and politics so uninterested in the common good and the national interest that it still astounds. The media has begun to grasp how wild and unprecedented in its lack of seriousness this campaign really is - but it took them all too long to figure out the horrendous lies at the heart of the Bush era. So we cannot count on them.
So, who does need to figure out how to put this all in proper context? To explain the tragedy of this all-too-serious charade to the American people?
Perhaps this is a job for the next President of the United States. Barack has spoken passionately about his desire to bring this failed conservative era to an end. To do so, he will have to take on one of its worst manifestations - its all too sophisticated and cynical politics.
Tomorrow we will be releasing a new set of polls which take an indepth look at the public's views of the immgration debate in four key battleground states - CO, FL, NM and NV. In preparing for their release, one thing became clear to us at NDN - that of the final 10 or so states where the election will be fought, four states with 46 Electoral College votes have significant Hispanic populations.
Using the latest Real Clear Politics map as our guide, there are now 10 toss up states - CO, FL, IN, MI, NM, NV, OH, PA and VA. Gone are some of the Obama hopefuls - AK, GA, MO, MT, NC - which seem to be drifting back into the GOP camp. Of the remaining 10, they fall into three categories - the Industrial North (IN, MI, OH, PA), the heavily Hispanic (CO, FL, NM, NV) and the rest (NH, VA).
More than a third of the Electoral College votes still up for grabs run through heavily Hispanic territory. With this, one would expect a great deal more attention, more spending, more candidate time - and all the rest - on Hispanic voters and in these states this fall.
Check back around noon tomorrow for our report, and for more background on the growing power of the Hispanic vote in America. And if you are in town tomorrow, drop by our Poll Briefing at 10 a.m. at the NDN offices.
A few hours ago, I got off the phone with my Dad who was driving by Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. Seeing the large crowds and commotion, he asked if I had heard whether "anyone big" was visiting. He said he thought U.S. Sen. John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin were making a stop there, so I looked it up and confirmed to him that he was right, prompting him to react with what seems to be the prevailing assessment surrounding the GOP ticket: everyone was there to see Palin.
McCain, who was quick to label U.S. Sen. Barack Obama as a celebrity, now embraces, perhaps even encourages, the glamorous reception with which his running mate is met. It seems like he was right to do so in the short-term, as the focus of the election, as Simon has mentioned, has shifted to Palin. Though that's not really surprising, given that the timing of her introduction left us either amazed by her acceptance speech or wondering who she is and what she believes.
Yet while the scramble for information over Palin was especially hurried after she was chosen as McCain's running mate, the dust has since settled from her speech in St. Paul. And with the clearing comes more information - from her understanding of institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to her conduct as Governor. What little we are learning about Palin comes from her interactions with regular citizens since she has been absent from the talk shows, as well as through close friends who speak well of her personally but seem mixed when the subject turns to politics.
All of this unravels before our eyes, gets us caught up in Alaska drama, and deflects attention away from McCain towards Palin. Recognizing this, and maybe trusting the media and the American people to do its due diligence on Palin, the Obama campaign is bringing the focus back to the GOP nominee and his Party's record. Its latest ads, "No Maverick" and "Naked Lies", as well as his speech on education are good examples of this strategy.
Meanwhile, McCain continues to tout Palin - whose speech is the only one from the GOP Convention that is highlighted on McCain's YouTube channel - and that maverick nature of theirs. As mentioned above, plenty of people have and will sift through Sarah Palin's past and credentials, which frees us up to focus on the notion of the maverick.
One definition from Princeton shows that, as a noun, "maverick" has two meanings: First, a rebel; and second, an unbranded rage animal that belongs to the first person who puts a brand on it. An adjective for the term: irregular.
While the bit about the "rage animal" seems to align itself with one of McCain's purported problems, I must acknowledge that the term maverick does connote a positive image in the "independent in behavior or thought" sense. We're familiar with that image. It's what defined the John McCain of yesteryear and won him public admiration from all sides. Yet things changed for him when he was branded the GOP nominee and started marching to the beat of a different drum, avoiding or outright fleeing from his once admirable stance on a whole slew of issues. Instead of sticking to his guns, he gave into the brush-clearing tactics of his predecessors.
It's almost tragic, really. The glorified way in which he painted his maverick image is now broken, and in its place we are left with an all-too-familiar ideal that begs for real change we can believe in.
Update: The Huffington Post is chronicling the news sources that are speaking out about the McCain campaign's recent tactics, which seem to evoke the irregular nature of the maverick.
Update II: Reuters shows how McCain finds the campaign trail to be more hostile when Palin's deference-deserving persona isn't with him on the trail.
Update III: Brave New PAC weighs in on the maverick's campaign in the video below:
(Note: You are now free from my random musings and long and tedious '08 Updates, as I have left NDN. Unless a new Kanye West video comes out and I can relate it to the work of the NDNBlog champions, it's safe to say that I will be appearing much less in the months ahead. I do look forward to returning occasionally, and hope to see you all soon! Thanks for putting up with me for so long...)
That Jack Abramoff was sentenced to prison the same day U.S. Sen. John McCain spoke to the Republican Convention warrants some sustained reflection. For what it reminds us of is that try as he might, John McCain simply cannot shake and distance himself from the recent disapointing era of Republican rule.
One of the most important things the Obama camp will have to do in the days ahead is to do a better job at evoking what went wrong when the GOP was in charge, and reminding everyone that for a generation, John McCain has been, yes, a Republican leader. "Voted with Bush 90 percent of the time." Does that do it? Is it potent enough? Why not indict the whole Republican era, not just Bush? For while Bush is going away, those Republicans and their politics remain - unprecedented corruption (images of Abramoff, Don Young, Cunningham, etc), an economics for the wealthy by the wealthy and not for us, a foreign policy that has left our enemies emboldened, Bin Laden on the loose, and our military less capable of defending America? That by electing McCain and Palin, we will be electing a political party and a governing strategy that has done so much to weaken America and its people? That this is the very opposite of patriotism?
As John McCain himself admitted in his speech to the Republican Convention, his Party left America worse than he found it......
We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption....We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles.
And that in order to win the nomination, and seize power, John McCain had to embrace the failed politics and strategies of this era? Its economics? Its foreign policy? Its slash and burn and lying politics? Its approach to torture? Toward immigrants and immigration? That in the process of winning the nomination that he became one of those Republicans?
Not a big fan of McSame - Some of the early arguments coming from the Democratic/progressive side attempt to make McCain into Bush. But I think this approach is bound to fail. McCain is his own man. He isn't George Bush. They may have worked together to bring about this disasterous conservative era. They have similar beliefs. But McCain isn't Bush. He has a powerful and compelling personal narrative. His take on Iraq is different. His economic plan is different. His position on immigration is different. It is time for those who have opposed Bush to let go of him as a man, and begin making the indictment against his beliefs, his government and the mess he and his team - with McCain's help - have left us. The country has written Bush off, and is turning the page. It is time for the progressive movement to do the same.
To that end, I think the new DNC Ad is a good one. It takes McCain's own words and ties them to the performance of the conservative economic strategy now embraced by the Arizona Senator. An editorial in the Washington Post today further disembles the inanity of McCain's emerging economic arguments, providing much more new material for those of us who have opposed the bankrupt and failed economic approach of the modern conservatives.
With McCain-Palin surging, the Obama campaign now has two jobs. To make its case for why an Obama Presidency will make America great, good and prosperous again, and why McCain-Palin won't, the Obama camp needs to take a page from the GOP Convention and offer a sustained narrative, over time, that makes their case. This is not about rapid response now. It is about recasting the race, taking it up a level, telling a compelling and powerful story, and coming to terms with that a sustained fight betwen Country First and Change We Can Believe In will put Old Man McCain in the White House next year.
As I wrote earlier this week, the central drama of the Republican Convention was not the emergence of Governor Sarah Palin, but could Senator John McCain adequately distance himself from this terribly disapointing era of GOP governance to give himself a shot at winning this thing?
As of this morning while I think McCain and his team tried very hard and had a strong last 2 days of the Convention I'm not sure they pulled it off. Hurricane Gustav did its part, knocking Bush and Cheney off the stage without disrupting the rest of the Convention. And Sarah Palin did her part, and has now arrived on the national stage as a powerful new part of the GOP's future. We also saw all sorts of GOP moderates, not normally associated with hard right conservative politics. We were bombarded with iconic American images, mostly from a time gone by. We heard about the virtues of small town life and the dangers of cosmopolitianism. We saw large and attractive families, strong and articulate women, and a never ending stream of American flags. What we almost never heard about was George Bush.
While Palin was a glimpse of the GOP's future, most of what we saw was an evocation of the GOP's and America's past. After all John McCain was born a long time ago. He is the oldest man to be the nominee of either Party. He is very much a man of the 20th century, of its battles, struggles and culture. The problem for him is that past includes the GOP's recent Washington ascendency a period which has without doubt been among the worst periods of goverance America has ever seen.
In his speech last night John McCain acknowledges his disapointment with his Party in recent years, and while he does his best to spread the blame the thrust of his remarks are clear:
I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles.
And in watching him last night, this aging warrior, I got the sense that he knew that it was unlikely that he was going to win this election and lead this fight in restoring his Party. That he could craft a road map, and promote the leaders - like Palin and Ridge and Whitman - whom he hoped would carry on this important fight. But that the damage done by the recent conservative rise was too great, too fresh and that too many of its leaders were still in positions of power; that he, by adopting so many of the core arguments of this era to win the nomination was no longer the man of virtue he once was; and that he at the end of the day simply does not have a big enough vision, enough energy, enough understanding of the moment to be the one who can lead this post Bush-DeLay-Abramoff Party forward.
Which is perhaps why this Convention spent so much time talking about him and his past - it was in essence a validictory event rather than the beginning of a winning campaign. And that it did achieve something very important to McCain - the beginning of the liberation of the Party he loves from the grips of corrupt, weak and ineffective leaders. That my friends is no small accomplishment, and one that McCain seems to be in the process of pulling off. Whether however he can do the next thing - make a more compelling argument about the future than his opponents - remains to be seen. The task of doing so became almost impossible when McCain sacrified his own beliefs and principles to win the GOP primary, and in my gut I think he knows this.
More than anyone else John McCain knows that the mythical character he has become is not the successful aging warrior, but the fallen hero, overwhelmed by events much greater than him. And that his year he will do his part and fight the good fight all the while knowing that it will be others who end up carrying on and winning the battle that he began waging in St. Paul.
I have watched the coverage of the Republican Convention for three days now and I have two main observations: 1) they have not presented a single proposal, just snide remarks (clever ones, but merely snide remarks all the same) and 2) the crowd is older and all white. Such a homogenous crowd is simply not reflective of the reality of the United States of America - watching and listening to the Convention makes one thing abundantly clear: the Republican Party is so very, very out of touch with the country they claim to put first.
Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black [which is 1.5 percent of those present, while blacks make up over 12% of the U.S. population], the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago. Each night, the overwhelmingly white audience watches a series of white politicians step to the lectern -- a visual reminder that no black Republican has served as a governor, U.S. senator or U.S. House member in the past six years.
The lack of diversity is out of sync with the demographic changes in the United States.Twenty-four state delegations at the Xcel Energy Center have no black members at all. A few weeks ago Simon wrote about the Census Bureau reportingthat racial and ethnic minorities will make up a majority of the country's population by 2042 -- almost a decade earlier than what the bureau predicted just four years ago. Two-thirds of Americans are non-Hispanic whites, 12.4 percent are black and 14.8 percent are Hispanic,according to 2006 census numbers. Not only is the party out of sync - it appears Republicans are making a concerted effort to ignore the multiplicity of nationalities and races in the United States, as they propose to eliminate all non-citizens from being counted in the next Census.
Only a few years ago, Republicans talked publicly about the party's aspirations to diversify -- So what happened? As in so many other areas, the Republican Party has no record and no proposals to offer any particular demographic. The party made a concerted effort to court Hispanics in 2004, but NDN has tracked how the GOP's electoral gains under George W. Bush have been diminished by the hard-line stance many Republicans have taken on immigration.
A black Republican delegate from Texas, Tony Leatherman agreed, "You see what Obama has done, and it's a reminder of what's possible." But the Republicans have proven that they are too cynical to consider what's possible, they're too busy trying to glorify the past in order to avoid dealing with the reality of today and the very real challenges of tomorrow. They demonstrate this by focusing on putting down their opponent - a product of the bi-racial, multi-cultural society in which most of America lives - instead of developing solutions that can appeal to the wide array of Americans. As Sally Quinn wrote, describing how the two parties are worlds apart: some people might want to live in McCain's or Sarah Palin's world, "but I believe that we live in Obama's world."
Since this presidential campaign cycle began, an array of falsities about John McCain’s record and what he stands for, ranging from misconceptions to flat out lies, have hallmarked the national debate. One of the most prevalent of these is the idea that McCain and Obama are similar on energy and climate change. This has not been the fault of just the media, or just the McCain campaign, but also many Democrats and environmentalists, who have been overeager to be "encouraged" by McCain’s stance on climate change.
The essence of this myth, articulated by Joe Lieberman last night:
If John McCain was just another go-along partisan politician, he never would have led the fight to fix our broken immigration system or to do something about global warming.
The fact is though, that the John McCain of this cycle is a "go-along" partisan, and is not good on energy. And Lieberman should know – not only did John McCain not lead on Lieberman’s climate change legislation, he didn't even show up to vote on it.
John McCain has no commitment to renewable energy, has not voted to encourage it, and does not believe that these sources can play a large role in the nation’s energy mix. He has backed away from cap and trade legislation, and the only energy plan he actually discusses is "drill." This is not "good on energy" and is nowhere close to Barack Obama’s energy plan.
In today’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman takes on this great myth. In his disappointment with McCain (a disappointment NDN shares on a number of issues, from climate change to immigration), Friedman argues:
With his choice of Sarah Palin — the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe mankind is playing any role in climate change — for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.
Given the fact that Senator McCain deliberately avoided voting on all eight attempts to pass a bill extending the vital tax credits and production subsidies to expand our wind and solar industries, and given his support for lowering the gasoline tax in a reckless giveaway that would only promote more gasoline consumption and intensify our addiction to oil, and given his desire to make more oil-drilling, not innovation around renewable energy, the centerpiece of his energy policy — in an effort to mislead voters that support for drilling today would translate into lower prices at the pump today — McCain has forfeited any claim to be a green candidate.
Or, as Bill Maher put it on HBO's "Real Time" this week:
New Rule: You can't put a windmill in your campaign ad if you voted against every single bill that might lead someone to build one.
My guess is that the McCain campaign never really vetted Governor Sarah Palin. For so long she was so unlikely a pick that whatever vett they did was not as serious as some of the other vetts. So when McCain did not get his first pick, Joe Lieberman - because it just became clear that the Right would go crazy - he had to quickly pick someone else. Angry that he had not gotten his way, and much to the dismay of his own team, he picks Sarah Palin. In a way that is very McCain, the maverick Arizona Senator called an audible and went with the telegenic, conservative, youthful "reformer" who could, in his mind, appeal to those Clinton voters. Sometimes when you go with your gut and not your head, you make the right call. Sometimes you don't.
All day I've been thinking about the McCain communications team responsible for the Palin announcement event. The lead staffer looks at the Palin daughter, with her bump, and says "what the hell is this?" The daughter goes up on stage with a baby and a blanket, in retrospect hiding the bump from the national media and the public. The key word here being "hiding." Was this also hidden from the staff? And who really knew? I can only imagine what happened when the staff started to realize that Palin had not really been vetted, that her daugher's pregnancy had been hidden from the public, and that there could be much more to come. McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt sounded like a bumbling high schooler when he was asked about all this on TV today. They seemed totally unprepared for all this all day long, allowing this wild story to dominate the first day of their Convention. I can't really believe the McCain senior staff knew about the pregnant daughter - and how is that possible? What a incredible contrast with the sure-footed Obama Convention and rollout of Joe Biden.
I end the day believing that this whole episode captures the essence of McCain - a maverick, a rebel, a political risk taker, but also a man capable of being mercurial, whimsical, careless, petulant, irresponsible. Traits that might make an interesting Senator but ones that could make for a truly risky or even dangerous Presidency.