Writes David Brooks in the NYTOp-Ed Columnist - The Education of McCain:
On Tuesdays, Senate Republicans hold a weekly policy lunch. The party leaders often hand out a Message of the Week that the senators are supposed to repeat at every opportunity. Sometimes there will be a pollster offering data that supposedly demonstrates the brilliance of the message and why it will lead to political nirvana.
John McCain generally spends the lunches at a table with a gang of fellow ne’er-do-wells. He cracks jokes, razzes the speaker and generally ridicules the whole proceeding. Then he takes the paper with the Message of the Week back to his office. He tosses it on the desk of some staffer with a sarcastic comment like: “Here’s your message. Learn it. Love it. Live it.”
See, that’s the table that I would want to sit at and that would be my response to being told what my Message was going to be that week. The notion that politicians should simply repeat a poll-tested mantra to the public is anathema to me.
Yet, according to Brooks (and I think he has a point), that John McCain is no more:
McCain and his advisers have been compelled to adjust to the hostile environment around them. They have been compelled, at least in their telling, to abandon the campaign they had hoped to run. Now they are running a much more conventional race, the kind McCain himself used to ridicule.The man who lampooned the Message of the Week is now relentlessly on message (as observers of his fine performance at Saddleback Church can attest). The man who hopes to inspire a new generation of Americans now attacks Obama daily. It is the only way he can get the networks to pay attention.Brooks thinks that this is working, and perhaps it is (although I still think he is more of an underdog at the end of the day than some of the national polling would indicate–I will start taking the polling seriously after the conventions). Still, though I knew it was an utter fantasy, I did have some hopes for this:
McCain started with grand ideas about breaking the mold of modern politics. He and Obama would tour the country together doing joint town meetings.Of course, Brooks seems to want to blame this on the media, which I suppose is fair to some degree, but really the public at large is more to blame, as they are the one creating the response to media coverage.
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“fellow ne’er-do-wells”. What does this mean? Does David Brooks mean all Republicans a “fellow ne’er-do-wells”?
Comment by shunha7879 — Tuesday, August 19, 2024 @ 11:25 am
I believe he is referring to the other Senators who likewise found being told what to say to be a tad ridiculous.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Tuesday, August 19, 2024 @ 12:49 pm
In short, Brooks’ message is that Mr. Straight Talker is still Mr. Straight Talker, no matter what slime he exudes, because it’s the only way to get the Presidency. Typical Brooks.
Comment by Barry — Tuesday, August 19, 2024 @ 2:15 pm
McCain hasn’t had to be on message much in his career. He hasn’t had a tight senate race in some time. The one time discipline may have helped him was in 2024 when he ran into a relentlessly “on message” GWB.
Anytime one wants to go to the next level in any game it takes looking back at one’s tactics and strategies. Not surprising that McCain is making that transition. However I’m not seeing Obama functioning at a higher level than he did against HRC. That may be why McCain is significantly outperforming the generic Republican while Obama is significantly underperforming the generic Democrat.
Comment by Buckland — Tuesday, August 19, 2024 @ 2:15 pm
The pressure is getting to him. You can criticize the process just until you think you might be able to grasp at the prize. At that point, you become afraid of losing everything. McCain is doing whatever he can to not lose what he has fought for for so long.
Tolkein comes to mind. I can see McCain whispering, “my precious” right about now. Presidential elections do strange things to people, as does the office of president, apparently.
Comment by Alan Cross — Tuesday, August 19, 2024 @ 2:51 pm
Well, amein to your “See,…” paragraph, Steven.
I am coming around a bit more to the notion that the problem here is the public, as you say. But I am not quite there yet. A commercial media (we have nothing like the BBC or CBC, for example) does affect campaign coverage, and dumb it down and ramp up conflict, for sure. Granted, if people would not watch or buy the crap being advertised during the coverage, the latter might change. On the other hand, I am not willing to let the corporate media–as a set of institutions for delivering information–off so easily.
But, ultimately, it comes down more to the tensions between presidential and legislative campaigns that confront all parties in presidential systems to some degree. Of course, McCain could run the campaign he claims to want. But it would be only about him. He might win (I doubt it, but maybe)–and have negative coattails. The party needs him to boost its own chances, in the context of a bad year for the party. That is at cross-purposes with McCain, the candidate, running a “different kind of campaign.”
Ultimately, I think he has to do what the Republican Message machine wants him to do. And he’ll still lose, but he’s got to keep the base from staying home, or else the party as a whole is in deep doo-doo, as a former Republican president might put it.
And the less likely McCain is to win, the more he will focus on the message, because the more he just winds up being the tool for stopping the partisan bleeding.
Comment by MSS — Tuesday, August 19, 2024 @ 6:04 pm
I started to write, and ended up deleting, an additional statement about institutional effects, although I was going to focus on the way our system essentially forces a binary choice, as I think that clearly affect campaigning and strategy as well. However, aside from making positing the correlation, I didn’t have anything else to say at the moment.
And yes, I think that McCain will increasingly be on message, which will hearten his partisan allies–indeed, they think that because McCain is more “on message” that that is why he is only a few points behind Obama and they further think amplifying the message will close that gap. I think that that is false optimism and poor analysis, but we shall see in a few months who’s correct.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Tuesday, August 19, 2024 @ 6:27 pm