A tale of two campaigns

Neil McKenty

This is being written a few days before the American election. Which gives me the perfect chance to go out on a limb. So here goes.

I assume that when you read these lines, the United States will have a new president and his name will be Barack Obama. Why did Obama win and why did John McCain lose?

The answer, in its simplest terms, is that the senator from Illinois had a plan and stuck to it. The senator from Arizona had no plan except to throw spaghetti at the ceiling to see what would stick. Not much did.

Senator McCain began by saying he would be taking the high road. He would eschew personal attacks. He would engage his opponent by arguing the substance of the issues.

The high road didn’t last long for McCain. When his campaign began to slip and slide during the summer and could get neither traction nor focus, a cry went out for help. And help came with a plane full of leftovers from the Karl Rove school of political operatives.

These are the guys and girls who specialize in the politics of personal destruction. Forget grappling with Obama on the issues. Instead, dig into Obama’s past to see what dirt comes to the surface. McCain, to his credit, refused to go after Obama about his relationship with his former minister Jeremiah Wright. But that left in play other blemishes on Obama’s record, particularly his association with a domestic terrorist named Bill Ayers.

Never mind that this was pretty far-fetched. This domestic terrorist had tossed some bombs when – get this – Obama was eight years old. Many years later Obama sat on a board with Ayers at a state university. Unfortunately for the Rovians who had taken over McCain’s campaign, polling showed that these personal attacks on Obama didn’t cut much ice with American voters.

Even on issues of substance, like taxation, McCain refused to engage his opponent. Obama cited chapter and verse to demonstrate that his tax cut would benefit 95% of the middle class. Instead of arguing the merits, McCain said his opponent was a liar, a tired old Republican refrain for any “tax and spend” Democrat.

It’s also ironic to note that McCain’s biggest splash during his campaign (the choice of the manifestly unqualified Sarah Palin) turned out to be in the end one of his biggest mistakes. By election day, some on the Palin staff were knocking others on John McCain’s staff and rumours circulated that Palin would run for the Republican nomination in 2012. A cynical choice had already become an albatross.

Against these fits and starts, with a different McCain theme almost every day, Obama’s campaign emerged from the beginning “steady as she goes.”

Obama and his staff had one paramount objective. They were determined to tie McCain as tightly to Bush as two peas in a pod.

And they succeeded mainly because they stuck to this theme day after day. Eventually the ordinary voter gave up trying to distinguish between the Republican President and the Republican senator. The sins of the one were visited on the other.

The steadiness in his campaign was mirrored in the way Obama dealt with unexpected events like the financial crisis. McCain ran around in circles – suspending his campaign, rushing to Washington, failing to get his colleagues on board – while Obama coolly waited for the facts before making a pronouncement on the crisis.

This is what eventually got through to the electorate. From the primaries through the campaign and the debates, Obama emerged as a thoughtful, eloquent, steady hand. These qualities were illustrated again in Obama’s choice of Joe Biden for VP. Biden was not a headline-grabbing choice (as Hillary would have been). Instead Biden was another steady hand, complementing and completing Obama’s own strengths.

So by the end of the campaign, the 47-year-old Obama seemed steadier, more presidential and more thoughtful than his somewhat irascible and impetuous 72-year-old opponent, and a majority of voters agreed with former Secretary of State Colin Powell that Barack Obama would make “an exceptional president.”

In conclusion I should say that if this analysis turns out to be wrong, at least I’ll have my very own “Dewey Defeats Truman” style souvenir.