The Second Debate and McCain's Strategicless Tactics
Fox News' text poll revealed that 82% of Fox's viewers saw McCain as having won last night's debate. My guess is that McCain's use of "that one" to refer to Obama was a conscious rhetorical decision to solidify his Fox News base. McCain couldn't bring up "Obama pals around with terrorists" without losing the ensuing discussion, but he had to dehumanize Obama in keeping with the claim.
But how does that claim fit into a larger campaign strategy?
There has been a lot of talk about McCain's having political tactics, but no strategy. He once did have a strategy, though, and the tactic of associating Obama with terrorism makes sense within that now lost strategy. McCain's original strategy was to emphasize national security as the focal point of this election.
It was for this reason that McCain insisted that the fundamentals of the economy were strong right up until Bush introduced the bailout. During the primaries even McCain acknowledged that the economy was his weak spot. His presupposed strength always had been national security. But the realities of the economy snuck up on him, and pulled his campaign strategy out from under him.
The realities of the economy snuck up on him. McCain's economic adviser Phil Gramm made his comment about "a nation of whiners" as a conscious political tactic. Conservatives have long referred to liberals as "whiners." Gramm intended to denounce all pleas that the economy had to take center stage--as merely a liberal ploy to take control of the election. But rather than rally conservatives behind his call, rather than provoke conservative pundits to denounce the mainstream media's concern about the economy as little more than liberal whining, Gramm's statement backfired. For the next two months, McCain struggled to maintain that our lending institutions were fundamentally strong. But in the latter half of September, McCain could no longer ignore our nation's tragic economic realities.
McCain's campaign strategy of emphasizing national security gave way overnight to hodgepodge tactics, like his grandstanding at the bailout's negotiations. What would have been a mere nuance in a greater argument about national security, McCain's attempt to tie Obama to Bill Ayers now sticks out like a disruption in McCain's campaign. Bill Ayers is neither a wanted criminal nor recruiting members for terrorism. For the entirety of Obama's adult life, Ayers has been a state-hired professor, now Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois. He founded the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society. His list of awards includes one for his being "Champion of the Public Interest." The only government he rebelled against was Nixon's during the Vietnam protest era--when Obama was eight years old. Obama's association with Ayers was a temporary one that had to do with their shared interest in reforming Chicago's education system. McCain's attempt to associate Obama with such "terrorists" originally didn't have to hold up under scrutiny. McCain's tactic of tying Obama to Ayers in the American psyche originally was little more than an addendum to an overarching strategy. McCain's experience was to overshadow "Hussein" Obama's little-known identity in this "scary time" for American national security. The Republican-devised $850 billion bailout wasn't supposed to happen. But the realities of the economy snuck up on him.
If you want to hire a personal bodyguard, you hire someone you intimately trust. McCain's original strategy of running for the nation's bodyguard relied on Obama's personal history remaining relatively unknown. When Hillary Clinton tried to decontextualize Obama's unknown background by dragging Reverend Wright under the spotlight, Obama responded with his "A More Perfect Union" speech, a race speech that will appear in American history textbooks for the next untold number of generations. Since then, Obama has been on a personal biography tour to introduce himself to those Americans who didn't know anything about him. The only way for McCain to secure American uncertainty about Obama required that McCain attack the truthfulness of what Obama says.
This part of McCain's original strategy was visible in last night's debate. McCain repeatedly claimed that Obama was going to raise taxes for the middle class, and Obama repeatedly responded that no, he was not, that he was going to lower taxes for everyone who makes less than $150k, and raise taxes only for those who make $250k or more. McCain ultimately contested in keeping with this carryover from his original campaign strategy. McCain insisted that Obama's voting record was more important than anything Obama said--thereby insinuating that Obama was a liar.
The voting record that McCain refers to is Obama's rejection of the Bush tax cuts. The Republican Congress passed legislation that lowered taxes for the middle class in the same bills that lowered even more taxes for the top 1%. Because of their augmenting effect on the now $10 trillion deficit, Obama voted against all tax cuts that included cuts for the top 1%. This is Obama's "record of voting against tax cuts for the middle class." He was trying to reduce the likelihood of our economically ending up where we are now. Of course, now that we're here, Obama's strategy to prevent us from ending up in this situation differs greatly from his strategy for getting us out of this situation. According to Obama last night, while raising taxes in the past might have mitigated some of our current economic problems, raising them now for anyone making less than the top 1% would only exacerbate those problems. Small business owners would take a hit, which would trickle down to their employees. To protect small businesses and their employees, Obama proposes lowering taxes even further for 95% of Americans, and raise them only for the top 1%.
McCain argues that Obama's voting against the Bush tax cuts signifies that Obama's against all tax cuts--and that Obama's insistence otherwise means only that Obama's a liar. Again, originally this was part of a larger strategy to position the certainty of McCain against the uncertainty of Obama in an election for this nation's bodyguard.
The question whose answer we'll find in the next few weeks of polls, not to mention on Nov 4 itself, is, Will McCain's tactics work on their own without their overarching strategy?
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