Good Advice For McCain
I don't quote Michael Medved very often, but he makes a lot of sense with this column. He offers firm advice for John McCain if he does, indeed, face Barack Obama in the general election: Do not try to play on experience or personal history in the campaign. That is precisely what has been damaging Hillary Clinton. Instead, make the issues and real policy the focus.
John McCain needs to learn the lessons of Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign. If he tries to emphasize his obviously superior experience and preparation for the job, he’ll lose in a landslide. Obama can easily characterize him as “yesterday’s man” (as he did in his victory speech on Tuesday night) and emphasize his opponent’s advanced age by “graciously” saluting his “fifty years of service.” He thereby makes the point that he himself isn’t even fifty years old, confirming his vacuous declaration that “we are the change that we’ve been waiting for.”
McCain and the GOP can win the election, but only if they draw crisp, unmistakable distinctions on the issues. Voters should face big questions: do you think America will be safer if we surrender to terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere? Do you want to pay more in taxes to pay for a bigger government? Do you want to pay for your neighbor’s health insurance, or is the nation stronger when we emphasize individual responsibility? Do we want more freedom and opportunity or do we need more government supervision and regulation?
On these issues, on these crucial choices, Republicans can win. If McCain explains those choices clearly and persuasive (and I believe he will) then his problems with movement conservatives will take care of themselves.
It has to be a clear choice between massive taxation and massive government intrusion into personal lives. It has to be about individualism versus raging statism; nannies deciding for you versus helping you reach goals that you decide for yourself. Obama is closing in rapidly on calling for a trillion dollars in new spending, make him explain how he plans to raise that kind of money without declaring the middle class "rich" and beggaring them with confiscatory taxes. Offer real choice, not just bland and directionless "hope."
The only way to derail a would be messiah is to expose their feet of clay. Don't fall into the Hillary trap.
By NortonPete, Wednesday, 20 February , 2008 @ 4:31 pm
Gaius, this is a lucid article and your addition concerning making a clear choice between massive taxation and massive government are on target. My darkest fears are that the economy will take a sharp down turn, and just like the conditions that got Bill Clinton elected, if you don’t have a job or health care, you will look to the government to bail you out.
By feeblemind, Wednesday, 20 February , 2008 @ 5:12 pm
While i agree with you in the abstract, this could be a tough strategy for McCain to pull off. I believe HRC has tried to shoot Obama down from his rhetorical clouds and it simply hasn’t worked. But you are probably right that the strategy is his best bet.
By syn, Wednesday, 20 February , 2008 @ 5:17 pm
Good advice unfortunately both Obama and Clinton can respond to the question ‘do you want more freedom and opportunity or do we need more government supervision and regulation’ with ‘but Senator McCain joined Democrats by voting for more government supervision and regulation’.
This is reason number 1 why so many Conseratives are disappointed with McCain, his own actions over the last several years have left nothing except national defense as a means to counter bad liberal policies’ how will he counter when he voted agasint making tax cuts permanent, voted for strict environmental regulations, railed against Big Parma, voted agasint drilling in ANWAR, proposed backdoor amnesty, and most of all intruded upon the 1st amendment whereby restricting free speech?
The only way McCain can win is to go back to the reason why he was pushed in the first place; establish the pereption that he he is the only one who could beat Hillary not because he’s he voted for many of the things she did but because so many Democrats(which means moderates too) do not want to have another eight years of Clinton. In other words, the only way McCain can win is if Clinton defeats Obama.
By martian, Thursday, 21 February , 2008 @ 10:08 am
My only source of disagreement with this position is that perhaps pointing out Obama’s inexperience and trying to contrast him with her own experience didn’t work for her because she didn’t have any more experience than he does. The only thing she has ever actually accomplished was to get herself elected to a second term in the Senate from a district that simply rubber stamps any Democrat’s candidacy. Maybe it didn’t work for her because people could see that?
I’m not saying he should make it the centerpiece of his campaign, but McCain shouldn’t run from it, either. He should treat it as a simple fact, known by all, that he has more experience and then get on with pointing out all of the other problems with Obama. After all, it woked quite well for Reagan when he promised not to pick on "my opponent’s youth and lack of experience" in a humorous way that actually made it even more obvious. I think McCain should take a similar approach.