The GOP’s Future and Why McCain Really Lost

After a couple of days to think about it, clarity has set in.

McCain lost because Americans desire security and usually vote for the “steady hand.” In this election, Obama appeared to be the “steady hand.”

I used to put a lot of weight behind the idea that voters are moved primarily by ideology. Just get the ideological message right and the voters will respond. Sometimes they do respond "with their head" to such a message. But Obama’s background suggests that he has a fondness for a kind of radical socialism that is alien to Americans.

The McCain campaign tried to bring this out, but they failed. Why? Did it mean that McCain himself was not moderate enough? Does this mean that the country is really not a “center right” country after all, but a center-left country (as “Jed L” of the Daily Kos argues)?

No. In these uncertain times, Americans more than ever wanted stability and security. This is a very conservative impulse on their part. They looked at the two candidates and chose the steady hand. Obama appeared cool, collected, self-possessed, intelligent, mature, confident, and in every other way reasonable. McCain appeared impulsive, such as when he pledged to buy up all bad mortgages in response to that day’s headline, or when he suspended his campaign and flew back to Washington uninvited.

Americans just want to keep the jobs they have or recover the jobs they lost, and at the wage they have had. They want to keep their house. They want their children to have the same things they had (or have even more, if possible; but these days they would settle for “the same”). Investors want stability so they have no surprises in next year's economy. Everything seemed “ad hoc” with the McCain campaign, as if he were saying, “Let’s throw this against the wall and see if it sticks.” The whole “maverick” theme smacked of frenetic eccentricity, which is just another form of instability.

The public craved stability but voted for a radical. They did so because Obama did not in any way seem to be a radical to the voters. In Saul Alinsky fashion, he wisely avoided alarming anybody.

The voters are also quite accustomed to baseless negative ads and attacks. They discount these attacks as exaggerations, if not outright calumnies, unless they “resonate.” They only resonate when the attack matches what the public itself sees in the candidate. As Groucho Marx said, “Who are you going to believe; me, or your own lying eyes?” McCain could have said that this year. The voters believed their own eyes, and not the attacks. This year, the public SAW A VERY UN-RADICAL OBAMA WITH THEIR OWN EYES. They were not about to believe any discordant attack that labeled him as a radical.

The tragedy is that Obama actually is a radical. But an intellectual radical with a seemingly moderate temperament.

The same thing happened in 1932, as Amity Shlaes describes in her book, The Forgotten Man. In response to the widening depression, Franklin Roosevelt pledged “bold, persistent experimentation,” which turned out to be a recipe for instability. The business community wanted stability. They would not risk precious capital in an atmosphere of uncertainty. Uncertainty is disruptive of the calculations that are needed before capital is risked. But FDR was such a reassuring and reasonable-appearing father figure that he exuded security and stability. “He was good on TV after the crash,” as Joe Biden might say.

The result was a depression that lasted an entire decade, as opposed to a severe but short-lived panic. Herbert Hoover (“Wonderboy” as Calvin Coolidge called him), was also a bold and persistent experimenter, having been a brilliant engineer and administrator. But with his priggish personality he had not reassured the public, nor had his tinkering provided the stability the markets needed, even if that tinkering had been in the right direction (which it had not been).

What the Republican Party needs next time is the same thing the Democratic Party always needs. It’s the same thing every party always needs. The answer is not to run to the center. It is not to throw Sarah Palin under the bus. It is not to purge either the intellectuals or the anti-intellectuals, the conservatives or the moderates, from the party.

The answer is to nominate a strong, mature, reassuring, cool, self-confident, reasonable, candidate. Ideology is important, but it is important as part of the candidate's formation and growth. It comes out but is more in the background during the campaign. What the public wants to see most is a grownup as the White House's next occupant.

FDR was a father figure. Reagan was a father figure. Clinton, despite his faults, came off as a reasonable, regular guy – a “fun dad” – the opposite of nervous and frenetic. Bush was a happy and reassuring Texan, quite likeable at first, and another fun dad. But then his administration became secretive (we don’t like an insecure dad who buries himself in the paper and ignores us). Carter was the regular guy from Georgia. Once in a while we elect a genius – Wilson or Hoover or Nixon -- because of their resume or their apparent cerebral competence (the "smart dad" who can help you with your homework). But the result is not always happy. Usually we want dad to love us and take care of us. This year Obama was dad, despite his youth. When we were little, our dads were young too.

Obama is a radical. The markets will not be reassured. Obama may even desire this instability because he can then more easily implement his ideas to a desperate nation. He can blame the chaos on Bush as FDR blamed Hoover. A guy who looks like he'd be a good dad might turn out to be a deadbeat dad. Just ask a single mom.

Will business risk capital in this atmosphere? If not, where will the recovery come from? Not from government, which gets it’s funding from the private sector. Why are the banks sitting on cash and not lending as they’re supposed to? GM won’t expand; they’re looking for a bailout themselves.

"Brother, can you spare a dime?"

Sarah: Come to Michigan!

Sarah Palin disagrees with the McCain campain regarding giving up on Michigan, and said she thinks she and Todd should come up here.

She talks not unlike a Yooper, and Michiganders (or Michiganians) would relate to this. What she would have to do is slip in a few references to "Up North." "Up North" is well-nigh sacred to many of us in the southern part of the state. We make our money, such as is still there to be made, here in southern or southeast Michigan. But then we like to spend some of it, when we can, "Up North," in God's Country.

What is Alaska, but "Up North" on steroids?

I think Sarah Palin could resonate in Michigan not only with native northern Michigan people, including "Yoopers," but also with us "trolls" (those who live "under the bridge"), because many of us hold the north country of Michigan to be nearly sacred.

By all means, come, Sarah, Warrior Goddess of the North.

Hunting Lessons

Sarah Palin's virtues are many, and I just thought of one more:

She can teach Dick Cheney how to hunt.

Live from NOLA

You watch.  If the levees break in NOLA due to Gustav, the GOP convention delegates will be watching on the Jumbotron while John McCain gives his acceptance speech from some gymnasium to where people have been evacuated.  I thought of this yesterday, but now I see the McCains and the Palins are planning to go to NOLA on Sunday.  But I see this extending into convention week.  The very savvy McCain has shown every indication that it is able to make such lemons into lemonade.

I can see it now:  Todd Palin driving some boat, carrying hapless victims out of the 9th Ward.  Sarah Palin wading through the water or filling sandbags.  A casually-dressed McCain in the middle of the action.

Of course, the partially-improved levees could hold and this may be mooted.  But I can see NOLA as Minneapolis south. 

"Sarah Palin, Über-Babe," or "Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington"

About a week ago, Jacob Weisberg from Slate wrote an online essay arguing that if Barack Obama loses the general election, America is a racist country.

Let me see him and raise him.

If John McCain loses this election, it is strong evidence that America has lost her character.  This is because Sarah Palin has character, and John McCain has shown character in choosing her as his running mate. 

Make no mistake: I am a conservative Republican of the type who has had reservations about Senator McCain. The Arizona Senator whom many of the press have dubbed a “maverick” has been given that appellation, in the estimation of many people like me, because he has strayed from the reservation of Reagan Conservatism.

Why, for example, did he champion campaign finance reform, which appeared to me to be an infringement of free speech? If rich bastards have a disproportionate impact on the public debate, the cure, it always seemed to me, was to publicize lists of wealthy donors to campaigns, so that the public could readily identify those who were trying to wield the “joystics of power.” (“Joysticks of power” is my trademarked phrase of mine; I can picture nefarious Superman-comic bad guys, wide-eyedly and orgiastically controlling the world with video-game controllers).

Why, for another example, did John McCain have a good relationship with the press? If anyone in the modern age has made a Faustian bargain with Lucifer, it is the MSM, the “drive-bys” (as the Great One puts it); those who buy “ink by the barrel” as Mark Twain put it. It could only be that John McCain had likewise Sold His Soul to the Devil, buying a few accolades at the expense of his Eternal Soul.

Ah, but wait: this is the man who spent five and one-half years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. Who had greater bona fides as a lover of his country that that?

This was the conflict in the minds of people like me: Did the GOP find its soul in nominating this man like this, who suffered so much for his country? Or did the “stupid party” once again nominate “the old guy” whose “turn it was”?

Just what, however, did John McCain actually do with his nomination? He went ahead and chose "Mrs. Smith" to be his running mate. “Mrs. Smith?” you say. Yes; Mrs. Smith. As in “Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington.”

Sarah Palin is the real deal. Oh, I know; “Put not your faith in men,” as the scriptures say, and you could read “men” as “women.” Sarah Palin could let us down, as could anyone.

But this woman came up to the mike and without a trace of nervousness introduced herself to America, and we were collectively mesmerized.

I was donating platelets at the time at the announcement, a process that takes up to two hours. While I had two needles in my arms drawing blood from my body, so that a centrifuge could extract the life-giving platelets, I found myself prostrate. But I did have a remote-control clicker in my right hand (I couldn’t bend my elbow for two hours, even to scratch my nose). I was, therefore, able to click between Fox News and CNN to follow the coverage.

What a beautiful lady Sarah Palin is. She found out her unborn son had Down’s Syndrome; and instead of aborting, she carried her son to term and made public statements about how beautiful he is: “perfect” was her word. WOW. Wow, wow, wow. These’s a holocaust going on, right now, at the expense of the mentally retarded. Thanks to people like the sophisticated and urbane Mr. Obama.

Mr. McCain is known for upholding “honor” and “duty” above all other ideological considerations. He sure showed it in the Hanoi Hilton, when he refused to go home when he had the opportunity, and instead stayed with his men.

He showed it again when he chose a genuine reformer as his running mate. Sarah Palin was on the Wasilla, AK, city council when she railed against waste in the budget. The sitting mayor tried to institute a recall campaign against her. It failed. She got elected herself as mayor. Taxes and waste were drastically reduced. Then she ran for governor of Alaska and won again. She took a jet owned by the state and sold it on eBay for a profit. She said she wasn’t a “mansion kind of person.”

She got herself elected without having to be beholden to the money interests of Alaska’s oil business; in fact, the people of Alaska elected her precisely because she did stand up to the corrupt moneyed interests of Alaska. This, of course, is bad news for the Alaska congressional delegation. Senator Ted Stevens won his primary, but he’s the kind of guy she ran against. As for Don Young, the state’s sole member of congress, ditto. The other US Senator, Lisa Murkowski, is the daughter of the guy she defeated for governor.

So talk about Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” She’s at odds with the ENTIRE CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION OF HER STATE. And yet, John McCain chose her to be his running mate, even though THAT CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION IS OF THE SAME PARTY JOHN McCAIN BELONGS TO. To me, this shows that John McCain, in keeping with his fidelity to Honor and Duty, has decided to Clean Up the Republican Party. God Bless Him.

As you can tell, I’m pretty “gone” on this chick, Sarah Palin. And I’m pretty impressed with John McCain at this point. Even though money is tight, I just made my first campaign contribution in years for this ticket.

God Bless John McCain. God Bless a Real Woman, Sarah Palin. God Bless Todd Palin, who must be a hell of a man to “close the deal” on a woman of character like this. And, as they always say, “God Bless America.”