McCain doesn’t know how to ‘distance himself’ from Bush
A couple of weeks ago, the Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported that a key aspect of John McCain’s general-election strategy is to “drive a triangulated contrast among himself, the Democratic nominee and President Bush.”
Reuters reports today that we’re starting to get a sense of what this strategy looks like in practice.
Slowly but surely, Republican presidential candidate John McCain is putting some distance between himself and unpopular President George W. Bush.
This week it was the ill-timed “Mission Accomplished” banner that the White House hung behind Bush five years ago when Bush declared major combat operations over in Iraq.
“I thought it was wrong at the time,” McCain said in Cleveland on Thursday, proceeding to criticize Vice President Dick Cheney’s various comments over the years that the Iraqi insurgency was in its “last throes” with “a few dead-enders” all that was left.
Last week, McCain surprised some in the White House by declaring Bush’s leadership “disgraceful” during the crisis over the 2005 Katrina hurricane that walloped New Orleans.
“Never again,” McCain declared.
The motivation is pretty obvious; Bush is, after all, “the most unpopular president in modern American history.” And the Republican Party is clearly sensitive about the Bush-McCain connection, as evidenced by Karl Rove and Fox News pushing back against it.
But in the end, it’s going to take more than half-hearted criticism of Katrina and “Mission Accomplished” if this strategy is going to have an effect.
The inescapable point that the McCain campaign either a) doesn’t understand; or b) doesn’t know how to fix is that subtle criticism is ultimately meaningless. One cannot realistically “triangulate” against an incumbent president while running on that president’s identical policy agenda.
For the McCain gang, this is about style, not substance.
McCain aides also want to paint their guy as different from an unpopular administration that prefers secrecy to transparency and friendly crowds to unpredictable ones.
“Sen. McCain believes every American should participate in the arena, and that includes people that don’t agree with him,” Schmidt says, taking care to note that such unscripted exchanges have waned “in the last decade.”
Additionally, McCain and his advisers want to pursue voters that look different than the bare majority coalition that Bush put together twice.
“We’re running a campaign that is not designed to get 50-plus-1 percent of the vote,” says Schmidt.
In other words, the pitch is relatively straightforward: “Vote for John McCain — He’s George W. Bush without The Bubble.”
But I get the sense this is a fundamental misread of public opinion. Bush isn’t the most unpopular president since the dawn of modern polling because Americans are mad over invitation-only rallies and misguided war banners. They’re desperate for change because Bush’s policy agenda has been an abject failure.
And here’s the kicker: McCain is running on Bush’s policy agenda anyway. On Iraq, the economy, homeland security, taxes, the federal judiciary, veterans’ benefits, and as we saw this week, healthcare, McCain is Bush, only older and with slightly better grammar.
McCain was recently asked to name the issues where he’s different from Bush. After hemming and hawing a bit, McCain could point to exactly one issue: “[W]hat‘s an area of disagreement? Climate change. I believe that climate change is real. I think we have to act.” Shortly thereafter, wouldn’t you know it, Bush said he believes climate change is real and we have to act — removing the one subject on which Bush and McCain allegedly disagreed.
Reuters reported that McCain is “putting some distance” between himself and Bush. In every way that counts, that’s just not the case.
Last week, McCain surprised some in the White House by declaring Bush’s leadership “disgraceful” during the crisis over the 2005 Katrina hurricane that walloped New Orleans.
And every time he says this, we flash the photo of him grinning widely as Bush presents him with a birthday cake while New Orleans drowns.
They’re desperate for change because Bush’s policy agenda has been an abject failure.
I’d like to believe that, but I think the strategy is to convince people that the policies were good. Only the execution was bad. And unfortunately, Bush is so incredibly incompetent that many will buy it.
But if the media reports it that way, maybe it’s enough. McCain needs to do just enough to convince his base, i.e. the mainstream media, that he’s breaking from Bush and is the free-thinking maverick again now that he’s made all kinds of mendacious promises to placate the Republican base.
Maria said: “And every time he says this, we flash the photo of him grinning widely as Bush presents him with a birthday cake while New Orleans drowns.”
So basically Boy George II’s birthday present to McCan’t was to drown his presidential asperations in the flood waters of New Orleans 😉
Sorry John, you are chained to the rock that will drag you under by your own choice, and the American people have no inclination to hand you a hacksaw, even to watch you cut off your own foot to get it out of your mouth.
The press feels it’s their duty to remake McCain to match popular public opinion so they set about to use a lot of different “words” to suggest that but the facts just don’t match up. He’s still McBush and so is the republican party. If you sober up a drunken horse thief, in the morning you still have a horse thief. In all policies he’s still McBush.
They(the corporate press and the republicans) want this race to “appear” close enough to justify stealing it. It’s not close and never will be.
I don’t think of McCain as McCain anymore. I had a lot of admiration for him back when he was willing to take on even the religious right, but as far as I’m concerned, his real name is McBush.
probably the best clue to McPhony being the same as Bush is not to compare the “same-ness” of McCain, but the “difference-ness” of Bush.
Think back for a moment or three to the times when Bush hinted at changing direction in Iraq, only to dig in his heels and argue for “staying the course.” That’s the key to defining McPhony—not by showing that he’s identical to Bush, but that Bush is identical to him.
If Dems can premise Bush as Identical to McPhony, and then submit the conclusion as being along the lines of “We’ve already had 8 years of John McCain in the White House—do we really need 4 more?”————————–then McPhony’s presidential aspirations will go into a tailspin….
I agree with Danp in #2. I think McBush’s media buddies will do their best to ague that Bush The Incompetent flubbed everything but the Brave Maverick War Hero will get it right. That plus Obama is a scarey black (some say possibly muslim) elitist with crazy friends.
But the kids will come out to bury the Republicans.
McPhony is a good meme, because it cuts against McCain’s storgest (and most bogus) attribute. The man has flipflopped on so many issues, and yet the perseption is that he’s a “straight talker”.
We need a bunch of YouTube debates where McCain argues with himself.
Another issue which ought to be addressed vis-a-vis The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang of Indecision 2008: His hard-wired insistence on the free market being Great White Father of particularly the Lower Classes, especially so in areas like Social Security and health-insurance “reform” based on what amounts to a vendored form of Fascism.
He traveled so far down this road it would be hard if not impossible to turn back and distance himself from Bush at this point. Most people though after what Rove & Co did to McCain after the 2000 election that McCain would be the last person to organize a George Bush love fest, but that is exactly what he has done in gearing himself up for this election. He needs to keep voters that only vote Republican within the fold and showing up on election day, it seems like he decided to live with the risk of loosing those more independent minded voters. Trying to get those voters now may be too little too late. These voters may or may not just pull the switch for him, but they are also the voters likely to switch parties (or vote across party lines) and see his love fest with Bush as a sell out to his previously bragged about maverick label.
McCain is distancing himself from Bush on the Gas Tax Holiday.
Hopefully the Obama camp will realize the other useful point to make about this dumb idea: if everyone disagrees with you, and you say you don’t care, you are an elitist.
Clinton’s Wolfson summed it up pretty well by saying that they ignored everyone. Somehow they are getting away with sounding anti-elitist, but it is just the opposite.
Both McCain and Hillary are arguing some divine knowledge to support their position. Didn’t we just live through seven years of this type of argument?
The depressing thing is it won’t take more than half-hearted criticism.
Half-hearted criticism will be enough because the Democratic candidates don’t know how to ensure McCain can’t distance himself from Bush. Obama had a chance to do some verbal judo on Fox News but utterly failed. He didn’t turn the question around to why the mainstream media isn’t making a big deal about McCain’s own preacher problem.
Clinton did a little better on Oreilly’s show, but not much better. Clinton is too busy questioning Obama’s experience and fitness for the job and Obama’s too busy trying to be “different” and “inspiring” so neither of them has time to define McCain. Meanwhile McCain is getting his free ride from the press and is using to great effect the tired old definitions of Democrats.
We’re going to lose again in November. We’ll lose the same way we’ve been losing since Mondale.
I can’t wait to see how they treat Bush at the Convention!
McCain is in a hard spot, nearly 30% of the population that thinks W has done a bang-up job. How do you distance yourself from policies your base agrees with ?
All he needs is Bush and Cheney upset because he slammed some of their policies. Obama has seen a tip of what McCain would get if he started talking about the current failed policies.
The all Zionist media is after Obama.To them Hillary or McGoo will do but no way Obama.Even NPR Lehuer report are gunning Obama. But why? Could it be that Israel firsters could become sidelined and American blacks more than house servants?
Maria–where can I get the picture you referenced? I need to send it to some of my Rethuglicon debate opponents. I like to taunt them every now and then.