First off, some chest-thumping.
Palin seems to me an awful lot like a process of elimination pick. The housing gaffe eliminated wealth, Hillary not being chosen made a woman a better pick than a man, Obama's big speech means that boredom won't cut it, etc.
It appears that I was right on this, if the New Yorker is to be believed.
... A week or so before McCain named her, however, sources close to the campaign say, McCain was intent on naming his fellow-senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, who left the Democratic Party in 2006. David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain’s top aides, told me that “McCain and Lindsey Graham”—the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain’s closest campaign companion—“really wanted Joe.” But Keene believed that “McCain was scared off” in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice.
“They took it away from him,” a longtime friend of McCain—who asked not to be identified, since the campaign has declined to discuss its selection process—said of the advisers. “He was furious. He was pissed. It wasn’t what he wanted.” Another friend disputed this, characterizing McCain’s mood as one of “understanding resignation.”
With just days to go before the Convention, the choices were slim. Karl Rove favored McCain’s former rival Mitt Romney, but enough animus lingered from the primaries that McCain rejected the pairing. “I told Romney not to wait by the phone, because ‘he doesn’t like you,’ ” Keene, who favored the choice, said. “With John McCain, all politics is personal.” Other possible choices—such as former Representative Rob Portman, of Ohio, or Governor Tim Pawlenty, of Minnesota—seemed too conventional. They did not transmit McCain’s core message that he was a “maverick.” Finally, McCain’s top aides, including Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis, converged on Palin. ...
Earlier today, Nate Silver wrote something similar:
She was the compromise choice after those names were vetoed during the deliberation process -- not necessarily the best candidate, but the least unacceptable. Rarely does quality emerge from such a process of elimination -- ask yourself why wedding music is so bad, or airline food is so bland -- and this was no exception.
So, it's pretty clear from the evidence that Palin was not McCain's first choice, but she fit enough criteria to be the pick. There are a few questions that are worth exploring:
1. Has Palin been an embarrassment?
I think that this is an emphatic "no," but someone with different political beliefs might argue differently. Palin's partially ad-libbed convention address remains the strongest critique of Obama in the cycle (with Joe the Plumber giving her a run for her money), and her debate performance demonstrated her poise, if not much intellectual curiosity (or respect for the word "debate").
If Palin has a clear weakness right now as a politician, it's her ineptitude in the one-on-one interview. The modern presidential campaign requires a million one-on-one interviews, particularly in the early stages. Palin needs serious coaching on this front. I'd grade her a C+ in the Charlie Gibson interview, but a D/D- with Katie Couric. Palin needs to get into the Bs to be more relevant.
Many on the Left have developed an utter hatred for Palin for numerous reasons, but the venom spewed in her direction is a special kind of disgusting, certainly comparable to some of the worst smears said about Obama, and by respectable commentators, too! The more resonating images are of Tina Fey's dead-on portrayal of Palin as a lightweight. Palin has plenty of time to work against this image going into 2012, but she'll have to do things like, brush up on one-on-one interviews, and work on a more complex spoken vocabulary.
2. What's with the animus from the right's intelligentsia?
This is a more interesting thing. Let me run down some of the quotes about Sarah Palin from the conservative elite:
The Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It’s no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain. - Peggy Noonan
I will readily confess that I was one of many who swooned the day after the announcement. But it’s kind of like dating a supermodel. There comes a moment, unfortunately, where they start talking. - Christopher Buckley
Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League. - Kathleen Parker
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. - David Brooks
If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency? - David Frum
Also, I don't have a good exact quote for this one, but George Will described Sarah Palin as "McCain's female Sancho Panza."
Brooks, Frum, Parker, Noonan, Buckley, and Will represent the media's best conservative commentators. All six have not had kind things to say about Palin. What gives?
I think that this anger and disapproval comes from two points. The first is that intellectual conservatives are more strongly elitist about government than just about anyone else. One running joke in American politics is of liberals as "country club elitists," which is an interesting shift from the old starched-shirt caricatures of Republicans. Will and Brooks are as starched-shirt as you'll get, when it comes to commentators. While both have a healthy respect for "ordinary people" and their preferences (which I find lacking in elite Democratic circles), both are heavily "elitist."
Palin, whose image has been as anti-intellectual as can be, grates on these people.
But really, I think that if you were to ask Brooks, Frum, Parker, Noonan, Buckley and Will about their feelings for the current sitting president, none would offer kind words. I think that this is at the very core of the Palin hostility from the right. Palin reminds them of Bush. This class of conservative intellectuals would like to move back to its view of "traditional" conservatism, but Palin's personality and approach are a bit too Bush-like for this mind.
3. So, was Palin a net positive, or a net negative?
I'll cop out and argue "neutral." For one, she ignited the Republican base and brought in some much needed funds. I don't buy the "counter-fundraising" argument either. Let's sketch this out theoretically:
Obama $$ w/o Palin: $400 million
McCain $$ w/o Palin: $150 million
Obama $$ w/ Palin: $550 million
McCain $$ w/ Palin: $300 million
Even if the counter-fundraising b/c of Palin were equal (which I doubt heavily), the $150 million is more useful to McCain than it is to Obama; we're looking at a bit of diminishing returns at Obama's level of fundraising, anyway.
More critically, the Palin pick was a necessary gamble. The political environment was hostile to Republicans. The best ways out of that:
- Nominate a popular moderate Republican
- Nominate a fresh, unattached face
- Nominate a Democrat
The best popular moderate option would be Colin Powell, but that wouldn't have been an option, and there weren't many others. If you go too far to the Left (with, say, Lieberman), you risk alienating your base entirely (and there's simply no way McCain brings the Christian Right in with Lieberman on the ticket). Palin still remains an excellent tactical choice. She's as far away from the cancer of the national GOP as you could be.
But I think the McCain campaign missed an opportunity... and it comes down to the tactical nature of the McCain campaign.
I think it's hard to justify the way that the McCain campaign over-handled Palin in the early going. If I have read this correctly, the McCain campaign decided to keep Palin in hiding for a few weeks, only spoon-feeding her the McCain message and telling her to repeat it. It's a valid approach, but I'm convinced that it's a major reason why Palin struggled so much in the one-on-one interviews: she was overhandled and was not able to speak freely.
The only way to justify Palin not being let loose is that Steve Schmidt and the McCain campaign apparatus did not trust her enough on her own. And if that's the case, there's no way to justify the pick, try as I might.
I don't think that's the case. The rest of this is pure speculation on my part.
Let me take a brief step back and sketch out my interpretation of Obama's strategy:
1. Attach McCain to Bush.
2. Present Barack Obama as an American, but a uniquely-qualified American to handle the times in which we live.
3. Present Barack Obama as a defender of the middle class.
4. Using your massive money advantage, work an aggressive ground campaign and mobilize as many new voters who are swayed by his message as possible.
The Obama strategy was deliberate and consistent. The message: McCain is Bush. Obama is not. Obama is an American, actually, and one who cares about your needs. The other side is the heavy ground game, which far outpaces the McCain campaign. Obama's campaign is highly strategic. It has a set approach and has stuck with it through thick and thin.
I think that the McCain campaign strategy came down to the following:
1. Use free media to your advantage--control as many news cycles as you can.
2. Work to make the electorate distrust Barack Obama.
3. Distance yourself from Bush, but not severely enough to alienate the base.
4. See what works, and keep doing it.
The fourth point, I think, is the important one.
The McCain campaign approach was the equivalent of a guerrilla war. McCain had a small advantage in his couple-of-month head start--he could begin to frame the debate. That campaign failed quite badly--McCain didn't resonate with the general electorate all that much in the early months of '08. The Schmidt team came in with a tougher approach... one that started to pay dividends in July and August. Obama had something of a peak right around early July (for his Europe trip). The McCain campaign chipped away at his lead throughout those long summer months, bringing the race to the margin of error by August. It was working. McCain's campaign was running fairly humorous ads about Obama being a celebrity and out of touch, and the message was resonating, at least a bit. Much of the summer speculation about McCain's VP was more about how McCain could make the VP pick into something that vaulted him back into the race.
But guess what? By the time he made the pick, McCain was already BACK in the race, as per the polls. I think that the McCain campaign looked at the map, looked at the numbers, and said, "we might just win this damn thing straight up." And they decided that an unmanaged Palin was more of a risk. Why rock the boat? The flexible McCain campaign decided to hedge its Palin bet.
The gamble was picking Palin. The hedge was overhandling Palin. In the end, though, this kind of hedge just eliminated much of the prospects for large-scale success. McCain couldn't have known that the economy would turn so dramatically against Republicans, but it would have been sounder strategy to run a fast-and-loose campaign in this. McCain could have laughed off the first inconsistency and said, "Sarah's being Sarah. We're not going to agree on everything. We're mavericks!" It's possible that Palin would have self-destructed, but that's the nature of taking risks in a hostile year.
Recent reports have convinced me that McCain has given Palin more freedom to maneuver. But the damage, I think, is done.
Of course, the banking crisis happened, and that may well be the end of the story--we simply can't know if a more liberated Palin would have vaulted the ticket up by a few points, or would have driven it down by a few points, or wouldn't have done anything.
My criticism of the campaign, then, is this: while a brilliant operative who almost pulled off a massive upset, Steve Schmidt was seduced by friendly polls, making him adopt a more cautious approach rather than a bolder approach. Make no mistake: events dominate this narrative. But I think that Schmidt should have argued for a riskier approach.
No comments:
Post a Comment