Cross-posted at The Square Deal:
Reading a lot of the blogs, the most common complaint about John McCain is that he has gone negative.
“Why O, Why isn’t he the McCain of 2000?” People ask.
Alex Massie and Ezra Klein give a very plausible answer.
Klein shares an article from Politco that talks about how McCain tried to be a “different kind of Republican” going on poverty tours and giving substantive speeches. The result? No one cared:
“We recognize it’s not going to be 2000 again,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, alluding to the media’s swooning coverage of McCain’s ill-fated crusade against then-Gov. George W. Bush and the GOP establishment. “But he lost then. We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”
Rogers, who hung tough with McCain through the dark days of the primary and has lived through every high and low of this turbulent and unpredictable race, argues that they tried to run a high-ground campaign and sought to keep the candidate in front of the media in the fashion he enjoys. His point: No one paid any attention.
“We ran a different kind of campaign and nobody cared about us. They didn’t cover John McCain. So now you’ve got to be forward-leaning in everything,” he said.
Klein shares this observation:
Earlier this year McCain made poverty tours and offered policy speeches. No one cared, Obama retained his lead. It was only when he began offering vicious attacks and daily controversies that he began setting the pace of the coverage. The McCain campaign learned something important about the media: It’s an institution that covers conflict. If you want to direct its coverage, give it more conflict than your opponent. And so they have.
The thing is, I would have loved a campaign on the issues, but let’s face it, when McCain was going to places where Republicans feared to tread, no one was paying much attention- even those who are now tut-tutting his decent into mud-throwing.
Centrists generally bemoan such mud-slinging. We want to see politics as a gentlemanly sport, something akin to the philosophers in Athens debating various topics of the day. We want to see it as a rational endeavor, where we discuss the facts of the issues.
But something that I am learning, is that politics, regardless of whether it is on the Left or the Right is ever a rational endeavor. Politics isn’t a debating club, it’s a full contact sport. If you are going to run for something like President, you either play big or go home. It’s not the way I would like it and no doubt, a lot of centrists don’t want that either, but that’s how the game is played.
Massie says, that politics isn’t about “losing with defeat.” This is what he says about McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his second in command:
Still, a super-qualified running-mate is not much use if they don’t help the ticket win in the first place. And that’s why I ask: what was John McCain supposed to do? The front-running candidates for his Veep would each, I think, have guaranteed his defeat. Mitt Romney? Please! Tim Pawlenty? What a snooze. Joe Lieberman? You have to be kidding. none of these men could have had Sarah Palin’s impact upon the race. None of them would have been a potential game-changer. They were – Lieberman excepted – safe picks who would have helped, I believe, McCain trundle along to a worthy, honourable defeat. (Lieberman, of course, would have been a disastrous choice.)
And that is what many of Palin’s harshest critics would have wanted. Better for McCain to lose with honour than prevail after an ugly, unpleasant, malicious campaign. And there’s something to that. Most of us, when we’re asked whether the ends justify the means, tend to reply, “Well, it depends, doesn’t it? What end? What means?”
But one may also understand why the McCain campaign doesn’t see it like that. Politics is, if you like, war by other means. And just as the logic of warfare can demand – when you get right down to the bloody essence of the matter – total war, so you might conclude, if the prize is big enough then politics has to be total politics too. Otherwise, why get involved in the first place?
Different folk will draw the line in different places, of course. But negativity campaigns work.
The result of going dirty? McCain is now posting some leads against Obama.
Now, I agree that McCain has been playing dirty and it would be nice if we had the McCain of 2000 instead of the McCain of 2008.
But the thing is, the McCain of 2000 lost. He didn’t win. He lost to a pretty dirty campaign by then-Governor Bush. The thing is, politics is about winning. And let’s be honest, while he hasn’t sullied himself as much, Obama has also played dirty at times as well. You play aggressive to win, no matter the party.
The fact is, the general public and the media ignored McCain this time around when tried to be the honorable politician. We want conflict. Look how much the media focused on the whole “lipstick on a pig” fluff. We want to see the mud fling and then turn around and start yapping about how mean politicians act toward one another.
McCain is to blame for playing below the belt. But some of those fingers pointing at McCain also need to point back to the rest of us for making the rules.