Bush And McCain
Yesterday was a big day for Senator John McCain: he can finally call himself the Republican nominee. Two days ago he collected enough delegates to win this thing. He has no opponents left. It’s a done deal. So, Republican President George W. Bush invited McCain to the White House, where the two of them held a press conference during which Bush endorsed McCain.
That qualifies as a big day for McCain, of course.
Anyway, the question is in how far Bush’s endorsement will help McCain. It may cause the conservative base - who still support Bush - to support McCain more actively and passionately as well, but it could also scare off many independent and moderate voters. After all, Bush is only popular among the conservative base, everyone else… well, everyone else thinks slightly less positive about him.
As such, McCain can’t become too closely associated with Bush… and especially not with his foreign policy. Sadly, it seems like Bush wants to crown McCain George W. Bush II, foreign policy wise at least. He said that McCain “is not going to change my foreign policy.”
Although that may be true to a degree, one should also recognize that there certainly are differences between the two men. McCain is, I think, less dedicated to a massive program to democratize the Middle East. That’s George Bush’s hobby, not McCain’s.
Aside from that possible difference, one has to keep in mind that Bush’s foreign policy isn’t exactly supported by the majority of Americans. Bush’s foreign policy is also one of insulting European allies, and it’s considered to be radical (justly so in my opinion). It’s not just about being on the offensive in the war on terrorism.
So, that’s not Bush’s strongest suit, yet he declares McCain his foreign policy ideological successor.
That could become a problem for McCain in November. If his opponents use these words of Bush - and they will, you can bet on it - Bush may do more damage than good.
Meanwhile: this is quite pathetic. Chris Matthews doesn’t sound like a journalist, but like a cheerleader. I’m reasonably positive about McCain - or at least not overly negative - but this is utterly silly. Stop building the man up; that’s not the role of the media. They should be critical and they should spend more time talking about the issues.
If the progress in Iraq continues though, people in general become much less critical of GWB’s foreign policy. The recent Pew polls showed that we’ve crossed a pivot point on Iraq; a majority of Americans now believe that it’s possible that we’ll ‘win’ Iraq, or that our mission can be successfully accomplished. Over the past few months, the trend line has gone up among Republicans, Independents, and even Democrats (less so among Dems, of course- but the increase in number of Independents who see it that way is significant.) Are those who see the mission as possible to achieve going to want to elect a president who didn’t believe that (and who ran on a platform of bringing troops home as soon as possible) or to elect the guy who staunchly supported the mission and ran on platform of completing it?
On terrorism, too, it’s interesting to view those poll results. Majorities in all groups of voters give credit to Bush for preventing more terrorist attacks- except for liberal Democrats when they’re segregated from moderate or more conservative Dems (and I think even in the liberal Dem group, 30-something percent admitted that Bush’s terrorism prevention has been somewhat successful.)
So really, although Bush is unpopular and certain aspects of his foreign policy are (rightly, IMO) disfavored by many people, I don’t think that the election is going to be decided according to who changes course from Bush the most drastically.
Oh, another interesting poll stat- for quite a while, solid majorities of Americans wanted the troops brought home from Iraq ASAP (though of course they differed on what they meant by that- timelines or not, etc.)
This latest poll shows that now the number wanting that are nearly tied with the number of people who don’t feel that way- 49% to 47%. I think if this trend continues, the moment the lines cross and the majority no longer favors quick withdrawal, is the moment that the Dem candidate will have to worry (and change the subject to the economy, of course
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Now that he’s won the primaries the next task is to consolidate support within the party. Going to the nominal head of the party, the President, would be an obvious first step. Why is that news?
That’s exactly right, Chris. Even if you accept a premise where it’s potentially equally damaging for McCain to cozy up too much to Bush as it is for him to diss him (I don’t even think that’s the case- I think most moderates/independents don’t require a litmus test of BDS), it’s still the case that it’s more normal for a member of the party of the incumbent president to be cordial with that president than it is for him to be adversarial toward him. In short, McCain happily accepting Bush’s endorsement is at worst a dog bites man story; if McCain had decided to give Bush the brush off it would have been man bites dog, and the media frenzy that would follow that would be far more harmful to him.