At this point, the prognosis for John McCain’s campaign is uncertain at best. Several polls show a marked tightening in the race, some with McCain even within three or four percentage points, while a slew of others show Obama with a six, nine, ten, or even fourteen-percentage-point lead. McCain has caught some big breaks recently, including the emergence of Joe the Plumber’s pointed question and Joe the vice-presidential nominee’s mouth. Obama has more cash to finish out the race, however, and has the benefit of the major media generally working for him as well.
One can stipulate that McCain might still win, but that, at this moment, the odds are against him. This situation calls for a double-barreled approach by McCain. On one hand, he must continue to doggedly pursue victory up to the last possible moment. On the other hand, he has an obligation to structure the last week of his campaign in such a way that he lays the best possible groundwork for a Republican resurgence in the event that he loses. He should concentrate on themes that serve both purposes.
The tax-and-income-redistribution theme on which McCain is hammering is one example of a theme that meets both criteria. It advances McCain’s electoral prospects in the short term, and it boxes Obama in and sets the Republicans up for a counterattack if Obama becomes president. Having been forced to defend his tax increases as limited to a small number of super-rich taxpayers, he will now be under enormous pressure to keep them limited—and, if he doesn’t, Republicans will be able to say “we told you so.”
There are at least two other obvious messages that could serve as McCain ammunition in both barrels.
First, McCain would emphasize what makes America special: limited government, entrepreneurialism, a uniquely American understanding of human dignity rooted in liberty and responsibility. We love our European friends, he might say, and we have deep respect for the common roots of our civilization. But we do not want to be just another European social democracy. Most of our ancestors willingly gave up Europe for America. Why would we want to give up America for Europe? Then McCain can tick off the particulars of Obama’s tax plan, his views on redistributionism and social welfare and health care, his views on regulation, his very European contempt for the values of the American middle and working classes. The alternative — McCain’s alternative — is an approach that tries to solve America’s problems without sacrificing America’s values. This election will decide if America remains a unique land of freedom and opportunity. If we lose that America, we will likely never get it back.
Such a message would serve two purposes. It would tie together a number of disparate strands of McCain’s argument, setting the context for the last leg of the campaign and the vote itself. If the stakes are really this big, someone should make sure Americans know it before they vote — not piecemeal, but in broad brushstrokes. And if Obama wins, it will be easier to rally Americans if they have heard this argument before and can put the pieces of President Obama’s program into the proper frame.
A second line of argument also suggests itself as a solution to McCain’s continuing problem of being tied by voters to President Bush. With Bush’s approval rating below 30 percent, McCain needs to make a stronger separation from the incumbent, akin to Hubert Humphrey’s famous 1968 Vietnam bombing speech, but in doing so he must be careful not to alienate conservative voters. This might be accomplished best not by McCain emphasizing how he deviates from Bush’s policies (though he can safely distance himself from some of those policies), but by McCain implicitly separating himself from Bush’s presidential style by way of attacking Obama. After all, presidents can influence the economy, but they cannot control it. They can influence foreign affairs even more, but they still must ride events. The one thing presidents really control is how they use the office of the presidency.
McCain can say: We need a president who talks with the American people, not another president who talks at them. We need a president who has confidence tempered with some humility, not another president who cannot admit when he is wrong — let alone one with a messiah complex. We need a president who will use his veto pen to check the excesses of Congress, whether Congress is controlled by the other party or by his own. We need a president who will control the spending of taxpayer dollars, not another president who works to blow up the federal budget. We do not need the third president in a row whose fame is derived from setting fundraising records. But we do need a president who gives Americans confidence that he will safeguard the rule of law and their civil liberties. Already, Obama’s campaign and his supporters in ACORN have benefited from campaign finance violations and have organized voter registration fraud; Obama’s campaign has threatened legal action against television stations that run ads that he doesn’t like; Obama has promised to take away the right to a secret ballot in union elections; congressional Democrats have signaled that they intend to shut down talk radio because they do not like its message; Obama himself has basked in the development of a cult of personality, replete with the mindless chanting and glassy-eyed children’s chorales touting the glories of The One, as if Obama were Kim Jong Il. What will Obama and his allies be like if they actually obtain unchecked power?
Here McCain would return to one of Obama’s greatest vulnerabilities, the well-deserved public perception that he thinks too highly of himself, but with a twist. It is Obama, not McCain, who would represent an extension (and aggravation) of what many voters see as the most problematic elements of the Bush presidency. (Indeed, Obama seems inclined to go well beyond all but the most outlandish caricatures of Bush on these grounds.) At the same time, McCain would be laying the groundwork for resisting the misuses and, more important, abuses of executive authority that may well come in an Obama presidency. Voters will have been given a framework within which to assess such abuses as they arise. They will have been forewarned and put on alert. A new narrative will have been put into play that could come to define Obama’s administration, if one takes office, should his presidency parallel his campaign. The argument, made now, may help save this election. If it doesn’t, it could help win the next one.
— Andrew E. Busch is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.
