Forum

This is not a postmortem, because, as Jules Crittenden has written, “The tea-leaf readers still haven’t polled the one person in America who knows which way this thing is really going. You know her. We all know her. Gore and Kerry sure do. She’s the fat lady. The one who, contrary to some reports, doesn’t warble till Election Day.” But I would be interested in hearing readers’ views on What’s Gone Wrong with the McCain Campaign, or whether McCain could really have been expected to come up with anything to clear the enormously high hurdles that have been presented this election year.

1) I think McCain could have run against Obama and won. I even believe that McCain could have run against Obama and the media and won. But having to run against Obama, the media, widespread voter fraud AND an economic crisis, after 8 years of an increasingly unpopular Republican administration around which public frustration has tended to coalesce (rightly or wrongly) may prove to be too much in the end. What could McCain have done differently? What, if anything, can he do now?

2) McCain is being criticized by many people for not attacking Obama’s many dubious past associations until too late in the day. I think it’s clear that McCain is not personally comfortable with partisan attacks, however legitimate they may be - and I think it’s perfectly legitimate to question why Obama, who could have chosen from among many people to work with over the years, almost always chose to ally himself with radicals (Ayers), racist demagogues (Wright) and crooks (Rezko). Is McCain truly making a mistake by not hitting Obama harder, or is he correct in his (apparent) assumption that this strategy will not work to win over undecideds?

3) Whether or not throwing the spotlight on Obama’s old cronies is useful, I believe McCain absolutely has to outline a positive vision of what he plans to do when he becomes President. Advocating low taxes and private sector solutions is great, and I believe he said something at one rally about a top-to-bottom review of all federal government agencies in order to determine which ones to cut back and/or scrap (he certainly ought to give this more air play). On foreign policy, I believe he’s been pretty articulate. What else do you think he should address?

4) There has been a lot of debate in blogdom about whether or not this is “the most important election in our lifetime”, whether this is a “transformative election”, etc. I tend to think it is not as important as the last one. In 2004, our efforts in Iraq had bogged down, we were almost two years away from the surge, and a Kerry victory promised to mean a premature withdrawal of our forces and a military and foreign policy disaster. Bush’s victory ultimately made the surge possible, led to the destruction of Al Qaeda as a significant military enterprise, and provided the breathing room necessary to give the Iraqis a chance to get their political house in order. An Obama victory could still do harm in Iraq, but a Democratic victory four years ago would, in my opinion, have been devastating.

Nonetheless, if Obama wins, there is obviously cause for concern. Do you think the greatest danger lies in his ignorance of a sound military and foreign policy vision, or in the possible threat to domestic freedoms by virtue of the Democrats’ increasingly cynical disregard for freedom of speech, and their open support for voter fraud? Or is the biggest danger going to be the usual Democratic tendency toward idiotic fiscal policy and unsustainable entitlements programs?