Obama's Adversity Creates Opportunity

After months of bruising political battles, the matchup for the November election is now almost set. It’s clear that one of the two presumptive nominees has been badly hurt by his party’s nominating fight. Barack Obama?

No. John McCain.

Certainly, Obama has faced the tougher primary battle. But in adversity has come opportunity. The presumptive Democratic nominee has been able to confront difficult questions about his candidacy that would normally arise during the general election. And he was able to test out an affirmative message of change with independent voters in nearly every state of the country.

McCain, on the other hand, won the GOP nomination by defeating a lightweight group of opponents best described as “none of the above.” He was never forced to define his candidacy or make amends with the party’s conservative base. Instead, he relied on the votes of moderate Republicans and independents as Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney split the conservative wing of the party. In the states where McCain largely clinched the GOP nomination -- New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida -- he won, respectively, a mere 37 percent, 33 percent and 36 percent of the vote. In all, as of May 8, McCain had garnered less than 45 percent of the total GOP vote.

McCain’s weakness has become clearer in the 3½ months since he wrapped up the nomination. Instead of staking out centrist ground -- the normal behavior after a tough primary battle -- he has generally moved in the opposite direction and focused his energy on mollifying conservative voters. In recent weeks, McCain has delivered a series of speeches aimed not at laying out a fall campaign strategy but at reassuring conservatives.

Some might argue that McCain, having pacified the right, can spend the summer and fall moving back to the center. But while it is unclear that he has yet succeeded in the former, the latter will not be so easy, because McCain has locked himself into positions that may imperil his chances of victory.

The deck is already stacked against McCain, as the GOP nominee. It is unusual for any party to win three straight national elections; it has happened only once in the past 60 years. With the specter of George W. Bush and his vast unpopularity hanging over McCain’s campaign, the challenge is even greater.

Yet in the past few months, McCain has not only failed to separate himself from Bush, he has, on a number of crucial issues, more closely linked himself to the president and his divisive image. On Iraq, there is increasingly little daylight between his stance and the administration’s. Considering that two-thirds of the electorate continues to oppose the president’s conduct of the war, this can hardly be considered an asset come Election Day. When it comes to Iran, McCain has adopted the same saber-rattling approach as the White House, bolstering the Democratic argument that a McCain presidency would be akin to a third Bush term.

With the exception of climate change, McCain’s stances on domestic issues from health care to the economy are remarkably similar to those of the president. His most recent economic address sounded the usual anti-tax and free trade themes that define much of Bush’s rhetoric on this subject, and he offered few substantive proposals for allaying the concerns of recession-fearful voters.

One of the more bizarre examples of McCain’s inability to distance himself from the president came last month, when online columnist Arianna Huffington said that McCain told her he did not vote for Bush in 2000.

McCain’s campaign harshly counterattacked, calling Huffington “a flake and a poser and an attention-
seeking diva.” Why McCain’s campaign would feel the need to declare unabashedly that he voted for a president who is disliked by more than 70 percent of the American electorate seems odd. A simple “no comment” and the resulting public ambiguity would have likely sufficed, but it is indicative of McCain’s weakness among conservatives that his campaign felt the need to so assiduously correct the record.

Yet for all these problems, the most damaging element of McCain’s run to the White House is that he was never pushed to lay out a compelling narrative for his candidacy or offer a signature initiative for his presidency. His recent “vision speech” on the goals for his presidency was platitudinous and provided few clues as to how he would achieve his lofty goals. Indeed, his call for less partisanship in Washington was overshadowed by Bush’s same-day rhetorical attack in Israel on those who, he alleged, would “appease” Iran. Instead of disavowing Bush’s attacks, McCain embraced them, undercutting his own conciliatory message.

McCain’s campaign to date has been all tactics and no strategy. Five months ahead of Election Day, it is difficult to surmise why McCain is even running for the nation’s highest office. The same cannot be said of Obama, who was forced to test his political messages in the crucible of a heated campaign.

Of course, there is a long way to go until Election Day, and McCain certainly has the opportunity to change tack. But his oddly easy run through the GOP field makes his challenge that much greater and places him at a serious disadvantage heading into the fall.