Saturday Night Live’s debate parody was expected to focus on John McCain’s transparent condescension or mock Barack Obama’s excessive deference. Instead, they chose to ridicule McCain’s campaign suspension and transform his determination to pull stunts into the skit’s main running joke.
That made for an underwhelming skit, but it perfectly captured the dynamic of the past few months of the presidential campaign.
Obama has been leading since the general election was launched on June 3rd, except for a brief period in early September where McCain’s convention bounce caused widespread Democratic panic. Sure, the race has not swung towards Obama’s favor, and his advantage has been narrow enough that the election has remained highly competitive. But the basic dynamic has largely remained intact: McCain has had to think of ways to come from behind and overcome the year’s Democratic fundamentals.
But this has to be executed with some flair for a new message, a new attack to break through all the noise of competing political stories: what a trailing candidate needs is to attract attention, steal the spotlight and catch his opponent unprepared.
What a trailing candidate - particularly an underfunded one - needs is spectacle.
Yet, one might respond, Obama played catch-up last year against Hillary Clinton without resorting to any spectacular gambles - so why should McCain? There is very little in common between Obama’s situation int the summer of 2007 and McCain’s situation today. The playbook for a candidate who is trailing in the primary is to have a solid organizational advantage and to gain momentum in the early contests. And Clinton looked vulnerable in Iowa and in New Hampshire; the only polls in which she had a seemingly insurmountable lead were the Iowa caucuses. Furthermore, other candidates were taking care of hammering Clinton, so Obama did not have to do so. (It was Edwards who relentlessly attacked Hillary’s ties to lobbyists and her vote on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment.)
On the other hand, a candidate who has fallen behind in the general election cannot rely on early victories to gain momentum: He needs to change the race’s most fundamental dynamics before a single vote is counted, and that is no easy thing to do. But whenever the electoral outlook has looked the bleakest for McCain, his campaign has managed to fight back with unexpected maneuvers that have repeatedly been successful in halting Obama’s momentum and keeping McCain alive.
The late July Britney ad, the Sarah Palin pick and this past week’s campaign suspension were all gambles that threw a conventional general election momentarily off-course. And whether or not each individual maneuver ends up helping or hurting McCain, such continuously unorthodox moves is what McCain needs if he is to have a shot at the White House. The politics of catch-up require such gambles.
Unfortunately for the Republican nominee, this also serves as a testament to the precariousness of his position.
For one, a gamble by definition can go either way: It presents higher rewards than the conventional course, but also greater risks. And while McCain managed to knock Obama off-course and tighten the race with his much mocked but nonetheless effective celebrity ads, his campaign suspension appears to have backfired: McCain blinked by deciding to join the debate without much progress on the bailout deal, and polls suggest that voters see the decision as a political stunt. Today’s trackings polls (the first taken entirely after McCain’s announcement) show that it is Obama who has progressed.
As for the Palin gamble, the jury is still out as to her final impact, and it is undeniable that she provided McCain a jolt of energy his campaign needed. But the past few weeks have been so disastrous for the Alaska Governor that many Republicans are getting worried that McCain’s gamble will end up hurting his chances. (Much will depend, of course, on Thursday’s vice-presidential debate.)
The second problem with the politics of catch-up is that whatever success a candidate has will only allow him to close the gap rather than pull ahead. In 2004, John Kerry had a very strong first performance in the first debate that changed the narrative and boosted him in the polls - but since he had entered the debate in a trailing position, all his strong performance won him was a dead heat race, with a lot of work left to be done to actually get an advantage. McCain managed to tighten the race with his celebrity ads and erase Obama’s edge with the Palin pick, but he only managed to capture a very narrow and very fleeting advantage in national polls in early September. The financial crisis soon got McCain down to where he started.
How many strong performances, how many successful gambles can one candidate accumulate simply in order to capture a narrow advantage?
This is not to say that McCain cannot win the election, quite the contrary. He has stayed far more competitive than many would have predicted in June. We are now about 5 weeks from the election, and McCain is within striking distance. All he needs to do is make sure that he takes that narrow advantage again close enough to Election Day that he rides it to victory. And he has plenty of opportunities left to achieve that: two more presidential debates, the potential of an October surprise and whatever other gambles McCain attempts in the final stretch.
McCain is still trailing, and some of his campaign decisions might have backfired. But his campaign has demonstrated that it is willing to take risks, and that means that they will not hesitate to seize whatever opportunity presents itself to them. That is why McCain’s failure to create a memorable moment at Friday night’s debate must have been so disappointing for Republicans: There are only a few obvious occasions left for McCain to make a move, and he needs to make the most of them.
The McCain campaign seems set on giving us as many newsworthy surprises as they can muster. Anything to change the polls and divert attention from the issues.
I expect they are now working on some excuse to delay or cancel the Biden/Palin debate that will dominate the news cycle for a few days.
I read today Palin’s 17 year old pregnant daughter may marry her 18 year old boyfriend. Even, as I suspect, this is only a rumor it will dominate a news cycle or two which is the only thing the McCain campaign seems to care about.
I assume the idea that McCain will only serve one term or that Palin will be replaced by whomever will reappear as the campaign tries to distract the media and voters from talking about platforms and policies.
Unfortunately for McCain his eratic behavior also brings a discussion of his age, temperment and judgement into question.
I’m curious as to the validity of this underground talk that Palin might be dropped from the ticket: is this really feasible? Or would that be, as I think, political suicide for McCain?
Dropping Palin will be suicide. So far she’s an asset for conservative base and some female Reagan democrats, but might be (or won’t be) helping with independents.
I think people viewing Obama better as commander in chief will help him in VA, CO, FL; we’ll see some of those effects in the next few days.
But Obama should go on the attack and take some risks if he wants to solidify his lead, don’t forget that this has been boosted in great part by external factors.
I think McCain’s gambles will portray him not as a successful candidate but as an erratic, unsteady and, thus, risky candidate. That is what I predict him presenting in the minds of ordinary voters, since he has made too many risky and much-mocked moves such as the Britney ad and the suspension of the campaign. The last thing he needs to do is not risk another huge gamble, but devise a strategy to presenthimself as aman of experience. To take huge risks in the final stretch of the election could hugely backfire and push McCain way behind his opponent and deliver him a crushing defeat.
The only thing we will have to wait and see what happens is how Sarah Palin performs and how women perceive the debate (is there any hint of sexism like the “You are likeable enough, Hillary” remark?). If Palin does not emerge as a victim in the eyes of women during the debate but instead as an incompetent, ambitious politician, it will help present McCain as a gambler and not a genuine leader. The next 2 debates will not matter unless Obamamakes a significant gaffe. A major national security event might present McCain the opportunity to try to catch-up, but it won’t help him overtake Obama.
It’s a very sad commentary(on America) that this race is even close. And it’s very sad to see Pelosi/Obama and the gutless Dems sell us out to Wall St. again.And Palin won’t drool all over herself and will be declared a great debater by the media idiots.
McCain taking risks in defiance of the CW has been noteworthy but there comes a time when the accumulation of all these gambits stack up and hurt him. I think we are there now - the “suspension” gambit failed and that was readily apparent by all the polling. The terms erratic and reckless are starting to become common in discussing McCain and that is not a positive for him.
He threw away his best chance of winning when the whole “experience” and “celebrity” attack of the summer was overtaken by the Palin pick. He managed to draw to a tie with those attacks in July and August. Yes Palin gave him energy on the right but negated the celebrity and experience attacks and her own disasterous interviews and lack of questioning have given people a bad opinion of her.
Jarret: McCain doesn’t have to remove Palin from the ticket; he just needs to plant the rumor and the media will run with it for as many news cycles as possible. The point is to distract the voters from the substance of the campaign. Sometimes this works, at least in the short term; as in the Palin nomination and sometimes not; as in threating to not go to the debate.
There are diminishing returns on this tactic/strategy and the more McCain does it the more trivial it seems. He looks unstable and erratic and the media is starting to comment on it.
Seeing how uncomfortable Palin has been on the trail lately, the only chance that she has is in the debate is for Biden to say something that women see as sexist and therefore boosting the GOP ticket: otherwise she will likely lose big time to Biden and be an embarssement.
McCain’s only chance is to make these gambles because he is behind and if he plays it safe simply hoping for Obama to stumble he will lose. The race is still close so until a gamble ends up destroying him, McCain will continue his big suprises. I wonder what the next one will be?
If McCain switched Palin for Huckabee he would secure the base; they’d be thrilled and McCain would have a deft debator and an affable, congenial nominee. But I doubt it would help McCain that much for the reasons Taniel points out.
Huckabee would be an interesting choice for a VP swap. But any switch at this point is easily spun as eviscerating McCain’s judgment. I could write the ad: “If, with months to figure it out, McCain couldn’t even get his VP pick right, how can he be trusted to run the country in a time of crisis?”
As for mechanics, see this Slate article: http://www.slate.com/id/2199167/. A change would require RNC approval. And it might be hard to replace Palin’s name on ballots if state deadlines have passed.
Of course, this all may be moot assuming she doesn’t implode on Thursday, which may be enough to clear the bar of low expectations.
McCain is a gambler and likes to take risks, not blind, careless ones but sometimes they are perceived as impulsive: the Palin choice was of that nature, as was the debate cancellation. The question is, does McCain ever admit when he is wrong? I haven’t been able to answer that question to my satisfaction. Perhaps someone can come up with an example (aside from the S&L Keating 5 scandal).
The answer to that question will surely determine whether he drops Palin. I think he is clearly unhappy with her, and surprised by her lack of — intelligence? (Maybe there is a better word, but I think it basically comes down to that.)
My guess is that she will stay on the ticket no matter how bad her debate performance is on Thursday night. I think pulling her from the ticket will be political suicide — unless he can convince her to withdraw, and then can replace her with another pr0-life female politician , more intelligent, who will also appeal to the base.
The talk of swapping a VP for someone else is only strategic, and it won’t happen. Name a candidate in our history who had to replace his VP during the few weeks of the election. McCain is risking of presenting himself as a hotheaded, ambitious, desperate politician.
I get really tired of hearing people play the sexism card. It makes me even question women’s fitness to vote, just I would have questioned any group that overlooks substance to vote based on identity. Palin must be subjected to the same vigorous vetting and questioning as all other candidates, and she should not be allowed to be agressive while Biden is not just because she is woman. If she is allowed to attack Biden viciously, he hould also feel free to do so. Otherwise, this is not democracy but identity politics taking over democracy, because it curtails one candidate’s ability to more effectively compete without fear.