Straight Talk to Victory?
Primary Decisions
By Paul Hackwell ’02
Sen. John McCain is no longer an outsider, no matter what he says. After a surprising 49 percent to 30 percent win over previous favorite and fortunate son Gov. George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary, Sen. McCain has been politics’ latest golden bull, collecting a cool $776,000 from his Internet site alone in the first four days after the win and reaping invaluable media exposure, plaudits, and legitimacy.
The $200,000 question now, though, is whether Sen. McCain can hold on to this momentum and ride his bounce enough to remain firmly in place as a presidential contender and not merely a footnote in electoral history. After all, if Gov. Bush had managed to consolidate his early hegemony, the race for the Republican nomination would be moot, as Gov. Bush’s early conquest for money and endorsements would have decimated the running field.
Despite the recent success of the Straight Talk Express, Gov. Bush is by no means a lame duck. Gov. Bush has garnered an inordinate amount of support from Old Guard Republicans, boasting the endorsements of 27 Republican governors, 37 Senators, and 175 members of the House of Representatives; the Republican Governor Association even endorsed Gov. Bush, the first presidential candidate it had endorsed in its forty-some year history. And perhaps most importantly, Gov. Bush has been a money train, raking in so much money in such large denominations—now about $70 million (four to five times Sen. McCain’s sum)—that he declined federal matching funds. One of Gov. Bush’s aides even had the bravado to claim that, prior to Sen. McCain’s win, Bush had 20:1 odds to win the Republican nomination; now those odds are closer to 10:1. Such personal and financial investment guarantees that Gov. Bush will not just be a flash-in-the-pan candidate.
In contrast to Gov. Bush, a big-party politics man to the end, Sen. McCain always been perceived as a lone heroic figure fighting against all odds. When Sen. McCain first began his presidential campaign, many pundits believed that he would be shackled and oppressed by big-party politics in a manner not unlike his imprisonment in Hanoi, that first great chapter in the epic that is Sen. McCain. It is no great wonder, then, that Sen. McCain should become such a media darling. This “lone reformer” image, the John Wayne figure who cleans out the filth from the Western town using only his gumption and his six-shooter, this charismatic and spontaneous man who fights against special interests and pork-barrel handouts, seemed destined to fail. As one Bush aide fumed, Sen. McCain has been the subject of 130 positive editorials in the New York Times in the past three years. He has amassed the praise of prominent columnists in The New Republic, Slate, and The Washington Post, and has been the recent poster-child of Leno, Lehrer, and The Wall Street Journal.
But Sen. McCain is more than a real-life movie hero transplanted to Washington DC; Sen. McCain is the more substantial Republican candidate. An exit poll in New Hampshire indicated that one-third of the voters felt that Gov. Bush didn’t seem to be prepared to be president because he lacks enough experience. And after Gov. Bush’s early slips in foreign affairs aptitude, Sen. McCain’s all-star foreign policy consultant staff, including Henry Kissinger and Jeane Kirkpatrick, allows Sen. McCain to claim dominance in foreign affairs. After all, Sen. McCain was one of the first in Congress to take a strong stand against Russia’s actions in Checnya and wanted to cut International Monetary Funds to Moscow.
Sen. McCain has a strong domestic agenda as well, including a past of lobbying against special interest and Big Money. Sen McCain holds forth a more reasonable plan for dealing with the budget surplus, calling for a smaller tax cut than Gov. Bush, one that would help middle and lower-class families. Perhaps most importantly, Sen. McCain seems totally unlike the current administration. A legitimate war hero, Sen. McCain has significant military experience and draws well from the active and veteran military demographic, a welcome change from Clinton’s spotty military history. Sen. McCain is distant enough from the current mess of Democratic scandals that he comes off as fresh, and not merely a suit born and weaned in politics. Unlike Gov. Bush or Al Gore or Bill Bradley,Sen. McCain didn’t attend an Ivy League school, and many Americans may have an easier time identifying with him than a candidate from the American political aristocracy.
Sen. McCain’s resounding New Hampshire victory was essential in giving all of this legitimacy. Six months ago, it would have been deemed political suicide for any politico to ally himself with anyone other than Gov. Bush; now such a decision might be said to reflect careful decision-making. New Hampshire wreaked a great deal of psychological damage in the Bush camp. Gov. Bush and his compatriots must face the fact that they are no longer invincible or perceived as such, and must find a way to surmount their decreasing confidence and the persistent stereotype that the Republican nomination race is that of a man against a boy. However, it is still early in the race, and Gov. Bush will retool and will mount a more focused campaign. Winning New Hampshire isn’t everything: Mr. Clinton lost it, and Gary Hart won it in 1984, only to lose the Democratic nomination to Walter Mondale after all.
It is likely that Gov. Bush will go negative on Sen. McCain lest he be labeled soft, and already Gov. Bush has released an ad in South Carolina that claims that Sen. McCain lied about Bush’s tax plan. Gov. Bush also hopes to expose Sen. McCain as a Democrat in Republican clothing, and thus establish himself as the true conservative candidate. Finally, Gov. Bush is ditching his reliance on endorsements, realizing that the endorsement of political liabilities like Dan Quayle (who endorsed Gov. Bush’s campaign Wednesday) do not help his platform.
But this does not mean that Sen. McCain’s vigor early in the race only served to enrage the Bush juggernaut and ensure Sen. McCain’s destruction. Although the open style of New Hampshire primary is slanted to reflect independent interests disproportionately, Sen. McCain is seeing increasing support both among independent voters and among registered Republicans, winning 61 percent of the independent vote (compared to 19 percent for Gov. Bush) and 44 percent of the Republican vote (compared to 36 percent for Gov. Bush), and splitting evenly with Gov. Bush the preference of conservative voters. All of this means that the South Carolina primary on Feb. 19 is crucial. Early polls show that Sen. McCain holds a five percent lead over Gov. Bush in that state, and should South Carolina’s 400,000 independents or 450,000 veterans show up for the primary, where 300,000 are expected, Sen. McCain could again cruise to an easy victory.
To accomplish this end, Sen. McCain must rally around a few key points. Since Gov. Bush is inextricable from the Republican status quo, Sen. McCain should continue to position himself as the only Republican candidate capable of independent thought. McCain’s character, too, which has inspired an almost patriotic devotion to the man, has paid dividends at the polls: the hottest issue for GOP voters is that their candidate stands up for his beliefs, and 60 percent of such voters who feel this way choose Sen. McCain, with 14 percent each choosing Gov. Bush and Steve Forbes. And it was the grassroots campaign in Arizona, in which volunteers comprised “McCain’s navy,” that won Sen. McCain his first seat in Congress. McCain should try to use these tactics on a national scale, thus also eliminating some of the problem of his relative dearth of money.
As incredible as it might have seemed earlier in the race, Gov. Bush is in the tough position. Should he move to the right and win the nomination, it will take some clever maneuvering to move back to the middle and capture the presidency. But should he fail to reinvent his campaign, Gov. Bush risks losing South Carolina and giving McCain a momentum that could carry to other open primary states like Virginia and even Michigan, which was thought to be under the control of Bush aficionado Gov. Engler. If McCain gets trounced in South Carolina, his campaign will take a massive hit, but if Gov. Bush cannot stem the bleeding and lock up highly symbolic Michigan, even the Bush faithfuls would be forced to convert. In that case, we may well see a departure from politics as usual.
