McCain and the Laws of Political Physics

McCain’s speech was good. Certainly not great -- he’s much better in a small room than a big room, and without a teleprompter, which I actually think is to his credit -- but good. It seemed a little flat and uninspired to me, though not offensive in any way, until he began discussing his war experience, which was rousing. It’s rousing, of course, partly just because of the details (unimaginable to almost all of us), but also because McCain is a decent man who turns the focus of his trials from personal glory into a revelation of the beauty in support from other people and belief in causes “bigger than yourself.” The whole speech reminded me why I like McCain so much, and why I wanted to have the chance to vote for him in 2000.

In writing about the conventions here and commenting on posts by friends and others, I’ve been accused of drinking the Obama Kool-Aid. Well, I’m an Obama supporter, no doubt. I’m also a real fan of McCain, and I hope their debates maintain the tone of their own individual speeches. But I want to write this post in a different spirit, because I can understand why my strong support for Obama might cause you to look askance at my analysis of McCain. So, I’m writing this post as if McCain were up against Hillary Clinton. Remember how I feel about her? I think Hillary is smarter than McCain (in the wonky way), but I have a much easier time liking and trusting him. I certainly know with whom I’d rather be in a foxhole, and up to a point I consider government and citizens to share a foxhole.

But the fact is, I’d be very torn right now if this were a choice between McCain and Hillary. I’m not going to mention her in what follows, but allow her presence to float above it, as a reminder that I’m sincerely writing about McCain and the country right now, and not about Barack Obama.

In a vacuum, it’s unfair to call John McCain another George Bush. But this isn’t a vacuum. And here’s how I break this down. McCain has not been extremely popular with the base of his party, because, as one of my friends said the other night, the entire reason he was considered a maverick was that he pushed a lot of the Democratic agenda while serving as a Republican. (Of course, those singing his praises as a maverick at the RNC declined to elaborate on this.) But how does that behavior and reputation translate into McCain winning the party’s nomination this year at a time when the party leans particularly hard to the right? Well, 80% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Whether or not you think it’s fair to blame Bush for a lot of that, that’s politics. And work. And family. If people aren’t happy or prosperous, they blame the person at the top. (It works the other way, too, as we know.) That widespread discontent created an opening for McCain. A good deal of that 80% has to be composed of Republicans, and presumably many of them initially supported Bush but are eager for a different kind of president. I won’t go through the roll call of other Republican nominees, but it seems likely that all of them reminded voters more of Bush, on some level, than McCain did. McCain’s now-long-ago criticisms of Bush probably didn’t hurt.

So, McCain gets the nomination. Now what?

Look at his VP pick. Forget about questions of Palin’s experience or foreign policy ideas or -- more jaw-droppingly -- whether she should even have to talk to the press. Let’s give her the benefit of our many doubts and call her a strong candidate. Is she the kind of running mate McCain would naturally choose? Here’s a woman he met in February, who he had spoken to in person once. On the list of those passed over, you have, among others, Joe Lieberman, who, whatever else you think of him, is clearly a close longtime friend of McCain’s who challenges him on certain issues but strongly supports him on others, and who -- as a bonus -- might influence the Jewish vote in swing states like Florida and Ohio. You know that in a vacuum, the independent-minded McCain would love to pick someone like Lieberman. But it’s awfully hard to be a maverick from the top of the mountain, so McCain’s appealing pot-stirring tendencies are largely negated in this election. In fact, they’re inverted. In order to “make up for” his maverick ways to the base, he has to do things like choose Palin, who represents an extreme voice -- pro-creationism in schools, pro-life even in cases of rape or incest -- and who was clearly more popular with the rank and file in St. Paul than McCain was.

Or look at a specific issue, like torture or tax cuts. On both of those issues, McCain was initially a dissenting voice in the party (I think dissenting voices within parties are incredibly important), but has since fallen into step. Let’s focus on torture, since I think economic issues are more complicated and would require their own post (and probably a more educated author of the post). Here you have an American who is rightfully lionized for surviving a torture very few of us could. (And most miraculously, to me, he didn’t just survive, he came back with energy and optimism. That’s mind-boggling.) And call me crazy, but to me that gave his opinion a little more weight when he initially spoke up about current U.S. policies. It’s not what made him right, but it’s what gave him more weight. Republicans have gotten a lot of mileage in my lifetime from the religious language of good and evil, right and wrong. Well, here was an easy test, and they flunked it. Now McCain can’t mention that issue, because the party as a whole, as Andrew Sullivan wrote, has made torture a “litmus test,” and so -- and here is the crux of so many political problems, on both sides of the aisle -- McCain can’t be true to himself and lead the current incarnation of the party at the same time.

And this is why, unless Americans can handle cognitive dissonance even more than I think they can, McCain can’t win. It’s not even that he shouldn’t win, it’s that he can’t. He has a lot of credibility with one group -- independents, moderate Republicans -- that should move in inverse proportion to his credibility with another -- religious conservatives. And he’s up against a strong Democratic candidate in a year when, again, the country wants a change.

That vague-to-the-point-of-stultification word, “change,” gets tossed around a lot in both campaigns now, but we should get back to the basic political meaning of it: a different party. And this is why even Hillary might send my head spinning these days. Sometimes, in a democracy, changing the party in executive power is a matter of conditioning the parties. We too often think of ourselves, the citizens, as the children, and as the politicians as the parents -- we beg them to give us what we want, tell us what we want to hear, and then we reward them for it with good behavior (voting for them). But it should be the other way. Sometimes, a party just needs to be reprimanded. Not because it’s inherently evil, or because we’ll never trust or love it again, but just because parties can’t go around pooping on the rug without consequences.

I could easily vote for the McCain who spoke last night, who talked earnestly about ending “partisan rancor,” about how some Republicans had let us down over the past eight years, and sincerely congratulated his opponent on his accomplishments. But how am I supposed to square that with the rest of his party’s oblivious steadfastness in the face of such nearly unanimous public disappointment? How am I supposed to square it with the schoolyard taunts I heard the night before from Giuliani and Palin, the latter of whom proudly trumpeted her experience as a PTA mother before joining politics but derided Obama for being a community organizer before politics?

John McCain, bless him, for most of his life has been a loyal party member, but not a My Party, Right or Wrong kind of guy. As a senator, he can be that essential voice of dissent, that gadfly. But McCain’s not riding this party anymore; the party’s riding him.