The Maverick Is Back!
online.wsj.com
›McCain Vows End to 'Rancor,'
Betting on Maverick Appeal
By GERALD F. SEIB and LAURA MECKLER
September 5, 2008
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Sen. John McCain seized the Republican party nomination he has sought for almost a decade by pledging to rise above Washington's acrimony as president and strike a new tone by reaching across partisan divides.
The pledge, in remarks prepared for the closing night of his party's national convention here, was designed to help him reclaim the image of an agent of change in a year when voters are clamoring for one -- and at a time when his image as a maverick has been questioned.
"The constant partisan rancor that stops us from solving these problems isn't a cause, it's a symptom," Sen. McCain said in his prepared remarks. "It's what happens when people go to Washington to work for themselves and not you."
It's a theme he has pressed for months on the campaign trial. Across the convention hall, the words "country first" were on display.
To some extent, the success that Sen. McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, has had in galvanizing the party's base here this week liberated Sen. McCain to reach well beyond those Republican voters to Democrats and independents in his own speech. Despite Sen. McCain's own calls for political peace, Gov. Palin and other speakers Wednesday night pressed a sustained attack against Democrats.
Sen. McCain leaves St. Paul in better shape than beleaguered Republicans generally, but knowing that to win he has to reach beyond a shrunken Republican base to reach voters from both parties as well as independents. His goal now will be to woo important blocs of working-class males, suburban women, and independents in a handful of key states to win in November.
A key step in winning those voters is to restore the brand of John McCain as unconventional and unpredictable independent rather than conventional candidate, and that was the image his speech sought to cast.
"Again and again, I've worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed," he said in his prepared remarks. "That's how I will govern as president. I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again."
He tried specifically to contrast his experience and his record of bipartisan deal making -- which sometimes has left him at odds with the party regulars gathered here -- with the track record of Sen. Barack Obama, who claimed the Democratic nomination in by declaring that he is best positioned to transcend Washington's entrenched divides.
'Scars to Prove It'
"I have that record and the scars to prove it," Sen. McCain said of his ability to work across divides. "Sen. Obama does not."
Republicans have controlled the White House for eight years, and Congress for most of that, but Sen. McCain is casting himself as an agent of change, an indication of the power that word holds in 2008. "Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: change is coming," he said.
Sen. McCain's effort to enhance his brand as an unconventional politician benefited from his surprise vice-presidential pick a week ago. His speech was staged to further the concept; he planned to speak from a stage reconfigured so he could accept the nomination surrounded by delegates in a town-hall-style setting.
The speech was to be proceeded by a biographical video of a man whose personal story has long propelled his career. He was held in a Vietnam prison camp for five and a half years, declining an opportunity for early release because others had been held longer.
"I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," he said in his prepared text. "I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's."
As he moves ahead from St. Paul, Sen. McCain's best hope for victory is to try to recreate, as much as possible, the electoral map that brought President George W. Bush re-election four years ago. That will mean, above all, hanging onto the key states of Ohio and Florida, the two cornerstones of any Republican victory. [Also VA and CO with their 13 and 9 electoral votes, respectively.]
Prevailing Winds
Yet even if he can, that might not be sufficient, Republican strategists agree. The prevailing winds strongly suggest that several 2004 Bush states -- Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia or Nevada, for example -- could go Democratic this time.
So the McCain campaign hopes to build a firewall by turning a big state or two that went to the Democrats in 2004. Michigan is the most intriguing possibility, along with Pennsylvania and Minnesota. [Among these three, MI is by far the most likely capture: siliconinvestor.com .]
Winning in many of those places, many Republican strategists believe, could depend on coming up with a sharper message to speak to middle-class economic anxieties. Sen. Obama is tailoring his campaign to bore in directly on those concerns, particularly with his proposal for a middle-class tax cut.
The McCain response is that, by keeping taxes low and improving the investment climate, he will foster an economy that creates and keeps middle-class jobs. [Not exactly an original idea, but an effective one, IMO.] But campaign aides acknowledge that they still have work to do in crafting a more effective message to the middle class on economics.
Among the tasks facing the campaign, "the biggest one is to be sure he has a domestic reform agenda on kitchen-table issues," said Karl Rove, long President Bush's chief political strategist, who contributes opinion columns to The Wall Street Journal.
Sen. McCain leaves the convention having advanced his cause on one key front: Gov. Palin clearly has energized the party's core of social and cultural conservatives.
Whether the convention has made much difference beyond that depends on how the nation digests both Sen. McCain's own speech and the Palin pick more broadly.
The new campaign hope, of course, is that Gov. Palin has a blue-collar appeal that will help hold Ohio and pull victory closer in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. "Her speech last night was clearly well received here," former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said in St. Paul. "It was received well in many homes across the country. The issue is how many."
Initial readings suggested a huge audience was, in fact, watching: More than 37 million viewers tuned in, just below the record of 38.4 million who heard Sen. Obama's acceptance speech last week.
Normally, though, a vice-presidential pick matters mostly in the margins. And under any circumstances, Republicans acknowledge, the climb to victory is uphill.
Sen. McCain trails in most national polls, though by a modest margin. But underlying the short-term poll movements, there has been a longer-term drift of voters into the Democratic column. When a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll asked voters in August 2004 whether they considered themselves Democrat or Republican, they split precisely evenly between the two parties. Now, the Democrats have a nine-point edge on party identity.
Maximize the Advantage
That means Sen. McCain has to maximize the advantages he does enjoy with a few voting groups. The first is working-class white males. This is a group that has proved more resistant than other traditionally Democratic groups to the Obama appeal; in the latest Journal/NBC News poll, Sen. McCain wins by 58% to 30% among them.
The second target group is suburban women, who are more evenly divided between the two candidates. Among questions here: How many would have gone to Sen. Hillary Clinton had she been the Democratic nominee, and how many can be persuaded to cross over to the McCain-Palin ticket?
The third key group is senior citizens, who have emerged as Sen. McCain's answer to all those energized young voters going heavily for Sen. Obama. Sen. McCain is winning 43% to 39% in this group.
Across all groups, the campaign realizes that Sen. McCain's chances improve the more he appears to be an unscripted and unconventional candidate. Voters in poll after poll say they want change from the political status quo. His acceptance speech illustrates how the campaign will work to realize that goal.
The campaign set up the hall to make his address feel as little as possible like a standard acceptance speech and structure it in the town-hall format where he feels most comfortable. Sen. McCain's speechwriters, primarily longtime aide Mark Salter, who wrote Thursday's speech, have often spun beautiful words that fall flat. Reading a speech has never been Sen. McCain's strong suit.
This summer the campaign almost completely did away with prepared speeches and surrounded Sen. McCain with voters. When he had a message to deliver, he did so from notes on a stand. The style is key to his whole persona, said Mr. Salter. "This has been the hallmark of how he's campaigned in the past year and why he's succeeded," Mr. Salter added.
"John McCain's best when he's John McCain," said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican. "John McCain is not the stiff guy behind the podium needing a teleprompter. He's just a guy who talks to people."
Rebuilt Stage
So the convention's stage was rebuilt for Thursday night's McCain speech, to add a walkway that extended into the audience to allow the candidate to walk among delegates.
One Republican concern is that, in other ways, Sen. McCain has drifted away in recent months from the "maverick" reputation he long cultivated. On policy questions, where he once almost relished bucking his party, he has moved closer to the mainstream Republican view on a number of issues.
He embraced Bush tax cuts he once derided as tilted to the rich. He has decided the comprehensive immigration reform he fought for must wait until the U.S. has secured its border.
Sen. McCain has also reversed a previous position to speak out for offshore oil drilling, citing high gasoline prices. He has made amends with religious-right leaders he once denounced as "agents of intolerance," saying he believes in reconciliation.
Stylistically, he's become more disciplined and better at staying "on message." To prevent him from straying from the daily topic, the campaign no longer invites national reporters onto his bus for his vaunted "straight talk." And the number of his formal news conferences has been sharply curtailed.
It appears to have helped in some ways: Since making these changes, he's risen from early-summer polls to reach parity with Sen. Obama.‹ |
