The Beginning of the End for McCain

The Beginning of the End for McCain
Expert guest post by Michael
Fauntroy

I am about to go out on a thin limb on this one: John McCain’s presidential
campaign will not make it to Iowa. At some point between Halloween and Thanksgiving
– and after months of sinking poll numbers, fundraising that is heading
in the wrong direction (the third quarter report is going to be a mess), and
staff shakeups that smell of panic – it will occur to the senior Senator
from Arizona that Republican primary voters do not want him to be their nominee
in 2008. The announcement will come around Christmas, though his stubbornness
might lead him into Iowa anyway or out of the Senate completely, doubling down
with an “all in” candidacy unencumbered by his Senate duties. After
he accepts this verdict, and it will be difficult given his ego and all he has
put into this race over the past seven years, he will do the honorable thing
and withdraw from the nomination contest. Doing so early will allow him to return
to the Senate – jaded and humiliated, but still able to be a real leader.
Some of the best senators ever became so after accepting the fact that they
would never be president.

McCain’s undoing is a shame. Base Republicans have long-despised him for
his willingness to work in a bipartisan way coupled with his penchant for telling
uncomfortable truths to the faithful. His flip-flop on the late Rev. Jerry Falwell,
Rev. Pat Robertson, and people of their ilk was seen for what it was and undermined
his support among secular conservatives. “The Base” wants ideological
purity, not functional governance. Despite McCain’s rock solid conservative
record, he could not give the base what it wanted in this regard. Add to this
the age discrimination that is working against McCain, and his candidacy was
doomed from the start.

He thought he could overcome this, but the fact is that he can’t. While
he is too conservative for my tastes, he is far more substantial than those
to whom he is now getting left in the dust. The notion that Mitt Romney, Rudy
Giuliani, and Fred Thompson can seem more presidential than McCain to Republican
voters strikes me as insane. All of them have shown far less consistency in
their conservatism and, more to the point, seem less craven in their ambition.

I’m particularly blown away by Thompson who, along with his people, has
done a great job in orchestrating a campaign to get him into the presidential
sweepstakes. Not one credible person was talking about him running for president
a year ago, but here he is surging in Republican polling. He’s part fiction,
part Hollywood, and part desperate answer to the prayers of those that don’t
like McCain, Romney, or Giuliani. Playing authority figures on television and
on film don’t translate into being president. His Senate service was largely
undistinguished and as we get to know more about his lobbying work – it
was recently reported that he lobbied on behalf of an abortion-rights group,
a no-no in GOP politics – the shine will likely fade from his candidacy.

But it’s not over for McCain. He can still be a significant player in
his post (non) presidential Senate career. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy
became the “liberal lion” after he conceded that he would never
be president and buckled down to do the dirty work of being a Senator. Very
few major pieces of domestic policy have been crafted without his input. He
showed how to lead from the minority during the crafting of No Child Left Behind.
That he is a major player in the Senate is borne out by the extent to which
the Republicans use him as their fundraising bogeyman. Republicans don’t
use Kennedy in this way because they view him as inconsequential; they do it
because the respect and fear him. McCain can have the same future if he would
just come to grips with the reality that lies before him: he won’t ever
become president. His leadership on campaign finance reform is well known and
much work needs to be done on that front. He has credibility on this issue and
can leave a legacy that will span the generations if he continues to lead the
country away from these massively expensive campaigns that corrupt the entire
political process.

==================
Michael K. Fauntroy is an assistant professor of public policy at George Mason
University and author Republicans
and the Black Vote.