Give John McCain credit.
At a moment in history that running for president as a Republican was akin to entering the Kentucky Derby as a pack mule, McCain managed to mount a credible effort against the most talented Democratic politician in a generation.
Now, McCain could have surely done a better job, especially on matters of discipline and organization. A prideful man who hates structure, McCain found it hard to submit himself to the ignominy of handlers and flacks and sound bite messages. He chafed at the bit, but old war horse still moved ahead with the campaign.
Of course you can’t exactly call what the GOP did this year a campaign. It was more of a try.
A campaign suggests organization and planning. McCain-Palin ’08 floated haphazardly like a homemade hot air balloon.
Hastily put together and done on a tight budget, its Republican creators couldn’t quite believe that it was actually taking flight. As late as September, against all political odds, this dubious dirigible actually seemed it might stay afloat.
There was giddy joy, but it was the kind of excitement that only comes when you know how quickly it could all be over. It’s the knowledge that a power line or a neighborhood kid with a BB gun could bring the whole contraption down in a flash.
Barack Obama ran an astonishingly effective political operation — a mobilized campaign in the truest sense. His ads were well done, his reactions were timely, and his team refrained from backstabbing.
But Obama’s real strength this year was knowing just how ready the Republican balloon was to split at the seams.
Obama jumped in line ahead of Hillary Clinton, who believed she needed to run on Republican turf. Clinton knew that Americans were afraid of terrorists, gas prices, a national culture in moral decline, and an economy on the brink.
She had sensibly prepared by boning up on foreign policy, attacking big oil, affirming her Methodist faith, and talking about the health of the economy during her husband’s administration.
It was smart but conventional political thinking. In retrospect, it was the wrong approach.
A refrain among Republicans since before the 2006 election has been “We deserve to lose.”
Whether it was for failing to adhere to conservative principles, getting embroiled in scandals, or just making political mistakes, party members no longer felt they deserved success.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, Republicans were still ascendant.
That was before Iraq went from victory to quagmire to tentative victory. Before Tom DeLay went down and Mark Foley was disgraced. Before the deficit exploded. Before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers hit the headlines.
The truth is that the Republicans never looked better than when they were on the verge of power. They never looked worse than when they had it all.
That’s the way it will be for Democrats too.
Obama may be the left’s Ronald Reagan, and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid could be the next Tip O’Neill and Lyndon Johnson.
But when the hard work of governing begins, the fun and optimism usually ends.
For the Republicans, the fun and optimism were over shortly after George W. Bush managed to fight his way to a second term.
And then, out of gas, and out of ideas, the Republicans looked ahead at still more daunting climbs, and began to give up.
By the time they had to pick a presidential candidate, the party was already flagging badly.
The intellectuals attacked the evangelicals. The evangelicals voted for Huckabee. The Sam’s Club Republicans attacked the supply siders. The supply siders voted for Romney and Giuliani. The Yankees sneered at the hillbillies and the hillbillies voted for Thompson.
And in the end, there was John McCain and his little homemade balloon still afloat. He ran on biography, not ideology, so he wasn’t brought down when the rest of the candidates hammered each other for various heterodoxies.
By settling on McCain, the GOP was able to put off, for a moment, the looming question of what it means to be Republicans. The new definition of conservatism could be put off for later.
The good and bad news for Republicans is that they can’t put it off any longer.
They can at least console themselves with that as they spend the next six months blaming each other for their sorry state today.
