Hurray for Bill Safire! Safire weighs in with a great piece that says it all:
February 21, 2000
ESSAY / By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The McCain Comeback
The bipartisan Comeback Adviser is again reporting for duty. In light
of the rallying round George W. Bush by South Carolina's religious
right, John McCain must arouse the Republican center in California and
New York. Here's how:
1. Identify the adversary. You were clobbered in a barrage of ads and
in low-blow phone banks as a liberal, unstable, baby-killing hypocrite.
You should now tie the victorious radical right firmly around Bush's neck,
portraying him as its captive. Therefore --
2. Do battle for the soul of the party. Your opponent, after New
Hampshire, made a Faustian bargain with the far right. Drop all
ambivalence about negative campaigning; let your assailants beware the
fury of Mr. Nice Guy maligned. Specifically --
3. Make Bob Jones U. the scene of "the Bush surrender." While
there, he failed to dissociate himself from its anti-black and anti-Catholic
reputation. Let Bush keep the hard right; remind Republicans on both
coasts that Bush wanted Buchanan in the G.O.P. when you invited him
out. In the same way, Pat Robertson threatened a mass exodus of his
followers if McCain won; what party needs disloyalists like that?
4. Seize on the triumph of the abortion extremists. Bush made a deal
with them to keep the rigid party plank prohibiting all abortion; you
would modify that in cases of rape, incest and danger to the life of the
mother. Many Republican women are 100 percent with you on this.
Show how Bush's sellout to the cottage industry of anti-abortion
extremists would enable Al Gore to enlarge the gender gap and bury the
G.O.P.
5. Concede no groups other than the hard right, which Bush will now
pretend he doesn't know. Hispanics count heavily in California; get your
strongest Latino and Latina supporters to cut spots for you there on
Spanish-language radio.
6. Put your opponent on the defensive on his record. Challenge him to
one-on-one foreign policy debates. Hammer his tax cut as selfishly
forcing our children to pay back the money this generation borrowed.
7. Use his most effective ad against him. "He likened me to Clinton,"
wails Bush, a message that did you in, according to much of the shocked
punditariat. But your "he twists the truth like Clinton" -- especially now
that he's spending heavily to make the line famous -- is your best shot at
his most vulnerable spot. Press it, concentrating on Bush's big mistake: at
every stop, ridicule his excessive claim of bringing a patient's bill of rights
to Texas -- when in fact he did all he could to stop it. That's Clintonian
truth-twisting. And in that regard --
8. Blast as ludicrous the Establishment candidate's attempt to
snatch your message of political reform. Because Bush saw your
reform appeal reaching voters, he suddenly adopted its rhetoric. What
will he grab next, your war record? Stealing the slogan of reform for
saturation advertising -- financed by anti-reform money -- does not
magically transform the Old Guard's favorite into a reformer. Bush's
campaign has been slamming you as a phony and a hypocrite; return fire
by slamming his "pretense" and fakery.
9. Remain the Happy Warrior, but focus on the warrior. You may
have the most likable grin since Ike, but the time has come to set aside
the goo-goo, high-road, ain't-this-fun attitude. Saving the party for
individualists and saving the country from a third term of Clinton-Gore
requires a vigorous counterattack.
Present yourself plainly as the only Republican who can win now that
Bush has abandoned the vital center to Gore.
10. Make your mantras "captive candidate," "pandering to extremists,"
"surrender at Bob Jones U.," "reformer-come-lately," "the real McCain,"
"pretense," "grown-up" and "the only Republican who can win in
November."
Adlai Stevenson said, "He who slings mud loses ground." But he who lets
mud be slung on him without exposing the mudslingers loses elections.
The downside to this comeback strategy is not that it would split the
party (Bush's Carolina surrender already did that) but that it might be
portrayed as intemperate. A great dare, perhaps, but McCain's place
should not be among those cold and timid souls who know neither
victory nor defeat.
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
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