Columns, Opinion

SELIBER: McCain’s failed campaign

Poor John McCain. He sold his soul to the devil and all he got was the destruction of his reputation, a dumb-as-dirt hockey mom and what is shaping up to be near-certain defeat on Nov. 4.
Life and politics contain wonderful ironies, and Sen. McCain has uncovered many of them in his endeavor to become the 44th president of the United States.’ For instance, he picked a female running mate to attract Sen. Hillary Clinton’s supporters, yet the latest polling shows 88 percent of that pool ‘-‘- far more than when Sarah Palin emerged ‘-‘- have since bitten the O-shaped line. He ran in the Republican primaries as the adult in the room, the elder statesman, yet every debate against Sen. Barack Obama has seen McCain disintegrate into pettiness and immaturity against this hip, smooth upstart who is wrecking all his plans.
But the mother of all ironies cuts to the core of McCain’s dilemma, and to the future of American politics. In the spring and summer, as McCain and his strategists concluded that he could not defeat Obama in an issues-based campaign, they made the fateful decision ‘-‘- as most underdogs do ‘-‘- to shift the focus to character, shining a light on Obama’s patriotism, motives and, of course, his connections to shady individuals.
The innuendo came early and often, beginning in the innocent days of late April, when McCain bizarrely proclaimed Obama as the preferred candidate of Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization and current ruling party. McCain’s campaign has rather baldly tried to equate Obama to terrorism and anti-Americanism ever since, a strategy that came to full fruition earlier this month when a series of supporters ‘-‘- a tiny minority, but a loud one ‘-‘- called Obama a terrorist at McCain rallies. For good measure, McCain’s demagogue of a running mate has inferred anti-American sentiment in not merely Obama, but in the residents of every big city in America (YouTube it, folks!).
Of course, McCain doesn’t believe any of this. He doesn’t believe Obama conspired with Bill Ayers to commit atrocities against the United States. He is probably horrified that he has attracted pitchfork-wielding psychos to his campaign events, secretly preferring the days when it was merely a few dozen war veterans who want to keep their social security. But he allows the mayhem to go on because he is a cynical politician who needs to grab every last vote he can find. He’ll deal with the soul-searching later.
In the meantime, McCain is on track to lose this election ‘-‘- FiveThirtyEight.com, an electoral projection website, gives him a 6.5 percent chance of roaring back in these last 12 days ‘-‘- and therein lies the grand irony: His shift to negativity failed. Every poll in the last week shows these attacks are a net loss for the McCain/Palin ticket in the eyes of the public, especially independent voters, who represent McCain’s only road to victory. Considering how effective smearing has been for so long, this is an amazing fact. It makes McCain’s candidacy tragically comic. He has become the first Republican in decades to be punished for ruthlessness.
On one hand, this is gravely unfair, since McCain is only attempting what President Bush succeeded in doing twice, for an office that McCain deserves infinitely more than Bush. On the other hand, McCain is the chief executive of his campaign; he brought this upon himself. If he is serious about returning accountability to the presidency, he should start with the stewardship of his enterprise.
In fairness, Obama is no saint, either. He is very skillful at attacking McCain ‘-‘- sometimes unfairly ‘-‘- and then shielding himself from criticism behind the veneer of his sparkling charisma. It recalls George Carlin’s great observation that Americans don’t mind if their leaders lie ‘-‘- they just want them to be good at it. But politics is a gradational game, and there is no comparing the tactical gall of these two candidates. Obama has never accused McCain of wanting to lose a war, but McCain has repeatedly accused the same of Obama.
The bottom line is that McCain ran a silly campaign in a serious year, and that is his ultimate downfall. The William Ayers card has been ineffective simply because, with today’s frightening economy, Americans no longer have the luxury to vote for a candidate for stupid reasons. Even if the Ayers connection meant anything ‘-‘- trust me, it doesn’t ‘– it wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans in the context of our current national problems.
Last week, HBO’s Bill Maher suggested to Larry King that on Nov. 4 we could experience a ‘Reverse Bradley Effect,’ in which many old-school racists could hold their noses and, in the privacy of the voting booth, actually vote for the black guy because he seems so much smarter and more serious than the white guy. Now that’s change you can believe in, my friends.

Dan Seliber, a junior in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at dseliber@bu.edu.

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One Comment

  1. Mr. Seliber, I applaud you!! Your article hits the nail right on the head. Enlightening and very Succinctly said. Thank you!