This election was supposed to be a referendum on Barack Obama. It has turned into a referendum on John McCain.
Obama started this election cycle as the unknown, if largely unblemished, candidate. McCain, meanwhile, began the process as one of the nation’s best-known political commodities. Or so he thought.
In Tuesday’s debate, it was McCain who was explaining himself and his worldview. And even if he succeeded in that explanation, it is surely not what he expected to be doing in October.
Democrats assumed that Republicans would define Obama as they had John Kerry and Al Gore. And for a time, it looked like it might happen. Obama as celebrity. Obama as unready.
But even when the polls dipped, Obama has refused to take the bait of Republican attacks. He has stayed on message as determinedly as George W. Bush did in his two campaigns, with a silky ease that the more plodding Dubya must envy.
As in his primary battle with Hillary Clinton, message discipline and avoiding over-corrections have put Obama on the cusp of victory 26 days from the election.
The brutal hangover following the economic binge of the past dozen years has played into Obama’s hands. By projecting a cool competence which has relieved doubts about his lack of experience, Obama was able to take advantage of the moment.
And a candidate could hardly be better positioned for this moment than to be running as a mommy government technocrat who promises to blunt the effects of the economic pummeling we all feel coming.
Obama has known from the outset that a generic Democrat was beating a generic Republican in opinion polls. So Obama has been as generic as possible. Rather than the exotic change agent we met in Iowa, Obama has subtly recast himself as a center-left, conventional Democrat.
Obama has been helped greatly by an incurious press corps that has found little to scrutinize in the most unusual path to power in modern political memory. But he might have known that would be the case. Obama also knew that it would be hard for Americans to make such a huge demographic break with past presidents, and he has cast himself as a comforting steward.
Meanwhile, McCain has been doing everything he could not to come across as a generic Republican. And this year, he had no choice.
Despite the hopes of the media magi that McCain would run a dignified and ultimately futile campaign, the Republican has pried at every crack he could find. It’s been thrilling, defiant effort, but one that has left voters confused about what McCain stands for.
McCain believed that his brand would endure no matter how many stunts he tried; no matter how many Hail Mary passes he heaved toward a faraway end zone. He felt sure the American people knew him in their bones.
On his biography, there is no doubt.
After two Baby Boomer presidents who have avoided personal hardship and sacrifice through wealth or cunning, McCain has positioned himself as, at last, a worthy man for the job.
Through decades of cherry picking issues and blowing up party orthodoxies, McCain can truly claim to be a man who takes bipartisanship seriously.
But beyond biography, McCain has some trouble with his brand.
People know who he is, but not what he would do. And in a time of trouble, people want predictability and steadiness – not mavericks.
Americans can predict that President McCain would run the military the right way, but success in Iraq and a disconnection with the troubles in Afghanistan have made it easy to forget that we are at war when our own material comforts are threatened.
Barring an international incident, this is a domestic election.
Aside from opposition to government spending and corruption, what is it that defines John McCain’s domestic political philosophy? On Tuesday night, McCain was working to place himself on the political spectrum.
His pitch was to expand his areas of domestic interest into a worldview, and, with the help of Teddy Roosevelt, a political brand. McCain the reformer. McCain the opponent of corruption. McCain the progressive Republican.
For a nation eager to see justice come to those who have taken so much advantage of late, it’s not a bad brand. But McCain has precious little time to drive home the pitch and to explain how his young, Democratic opponent is part of the status quo.
Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected]
