Why didn’t McCain win?

It was interesting listening to the talking heads over the evening, especially the GOP analysts (when they weren’t being rude and bitchy to the reporters, like John Bolton was on BBCa). Their analysis of the defeat was basically three things:

1. The “environment,” in particular the financial/economic collapse/crisis. 
2. Bush.
3. Not going aggressive enough soon enough.

In other words, nothing to do with McCain or Palin.

To which I say, bushwah.

The GOP, to win, has to do two things: hold the “base” and make folks in the undecided / uncommitted center flip. This is extraordinarily difficult to do, since the red-meat sorts of stuff that will get the base salivating is exactly the sort of thing that can be really scary to the center.

McCain’s campaign tried to play it that way, nonetheless, appealing to the Right and hoping to get enough from the Middle. They failed. They were so afraid that the Right wouldn’t come along with them (what were they going to do, vote Obama? Let Obama win?) that they spent too much time and political capital trying to be the Candidate of the Right. And the Candidate of the Right cannot win with just that base, any more than Obama could win as just a Candidate of the Left.

McCain, coming in as the GOP choice, had some distinct advantages here, all of which he threw away:

1. He was perceived as a moderate/maverick. This was scary and offputting to the Social Conservatives, but garnered tremendous support among the “traditional” Republicans and the centrists. But despite chanting “Maverick” like a mantra, he proceeded to do everything that the Far Right wanted as far as talking points and, ultimately, his VP selection. 

He also failed to demonstrate (in the face of Democratic attacks on the basis) that he was independent of Bush. The analysts are right as far as Bush being an anchor around his neck, but it was an anchor he placed there himself, that he wasn’t able to take off, and that the Dems quite effectively kept pointing at.

Finally, despite his actions in the past that showed (he claimed) his ability to reach across the aisles and work together with others, his increasing vilification of his opponents made that seem more and more problematic — especially since he wasn’t willing to offend his conservative base that hated his reaching across the aisle (e.g., McCain-Feingold).

2. He was perceived as an experienced leader. For all his “steady hand at the tiller” rhetoric, McCain never, under the campaign spotlight, came across as a leader that folks would follow. Changes in campaign management, changes in strategies and attacks, suspending his campaign for the economic crisis but not really contributing much to its short-term solution … he came across, instead, as temperamental and erratic.

And here’s where Palin comes in. As a man of long experience in the Senate, with all these great credentials, a powerful leader, a wise statesman … he chose an insular ditz from Alaska solely (it seemed) for political reasons. And it’s not like he chose her to be a cabinet secretary or something — he chose her has his potential replacement. It was a massive failure of leadership. While the GOP pundits still claim that nobody votes based on the VP, take a look at the the endorsements of Obama I linked to over the past few weeks, especially the Republican “defectors” — every single one points out Palin as the first and greatest failure of leadership and judgment on McCain’s part.

3. He was perceived as an honorable guy. From his POW days, to the contemptible way that he was assaulted in the 2000 election, to his come-back kid tale during the GOP primaries, McCain was seen as a man of determination and honor, and the media just loved him.

Then he tossed it all aside. He hammered on the POW experience until it became as much a joke as Giuliani’s “9-11!” mantra. He shut out the media, declining press conferences and not even wandering to “the back of the bus” for the sorts of ad hoc interviews he used to give. And he turned to the same media consultants that engineered the smear campaigns of 2000 to engineer new smear campaigns of 2008. 

Whether it was bad decision-making or a glimpse of the “real guy,” it tarnished any perception of McCain being a guy for whom honor and duty were the greatest calls, and made him seem more like just another name-calling politician. 

Maybe all these shifts in perception were not global, but certainly among many toward the center of the political spectrum saw it that way, and given the alternative of a charismatic speaker who comported himself with dignity and calm in the face of all the storms the campaign tossed his way, the choice was obvious.

And at that, the race was still very close, percentage-wise. There were 46% of the electorate that voted for McCain. If he had pulled a few more from the center, he could have won.

But to listen to the GOP analysts and consultants, that message has been lost. The economic crisis wasn’t a direct harm to McCain’s campaign, except that (a) he was associated with the Bush Administration and, more importantly (b) he failed to show any leadership in the matter. The electorate’s rejection of Bush wasn’t necessarily a loser for McCain if he’d been able to paint himself as something different, but his voting record and his perceived need to appeal to the Bush base kept sucking down into the maelstrom. And McCain played plenty aggressive, especially as the campaign wore on, but while it may have scored a few points, it also lost a bunch bu smearing his own “honorability” as much as it cast doubt on his opponent.

In the end, what made this campaign something different from the past was that it was not an election about fear — ironic, given the troubles we are in. Instead, it was an election about hope. McCain didn’t provide any of the latter, and his campaign increasingly took on the tone of the former, trying to tear down its opponent rather than build up its candidates. Obama took the opposite path, trying to make people believe. yeah, they struck back at times, but most of what they did was trying to encourage people, trying to get people to lift themselves up and face the challenges ahead.

That message worked. McCain’s didn’t. And that’s why McCain didn’t win.