It appears that the campaigns have entered a moment of equipoise. John McCain's masterstroke in selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate has about run its course leaving the race in the Electoral College in the balance.
Meanwhile, Wall Street has "melted down." This tends to favor Democrats who are traditional regulators of capitalism and further tends to reinforce their dreary version of the American economy. It gives them an opportunity to point fingers and blame Republicans because George Bush is in the White House. McCain has moved to confront the Wall Street meltdown but only defensively. He has taken steps to deflect the blame away from himself and onto both political parties, George Bush, and "selfish" Wall Street capitalists. At the same time, Sarah Palin has been confronted with a unprecedented series of attacks which cumulatively show signs of capping if not diminishing her astonishing popularity.
The danger now is that the convention/Palin surge has reached its high water mark and could even recede leaving the McCain ticket exposed to the many daunting secular trends which virtually all the pundits send have made his chances seem so poor and his advancement to this point so miraculous. It is unnecessary here to rehearse those demographic, economic, and media driven factors which make this a very difficult year for Republicans. If the surge has in fact run its course, if it is in full flood, McCain is in danger of being swept back by the inertia which always favored the Democrats this season.
In this state of equipoise, the McCain campaign can remain essentially passive as it has since the Wall Street problem began or it can move over to offense. Those who believe that political campaigns are won on defense will probably oppose the recommendations to follow. My belief is that if McCain does not take charge of events, events will take charge of his campaign and these events will be largely described by the media. If events do not take charge, and the media does not take charge, the debates will decide the affair.
That sounds to me like three ways to lose.
McCain and Palin have declared themselves to be the people who can go to Washington and actually reform that mess, unbeholden to party or interest group, they say they are qualified because they are possessed of a record in Alaska and in the Senate of actual reform.
Let the reformers reform!
The house has just passed one of the most cynical political travesties in the history of an institution renowned for its cynicism. The bill which purports to permit offshore drilling in effect prohibits offshore drilling wherever there is any oil to drill. In reality it permits no drilling but rather subsidizes it impractical left-wing alternative energy hobbyhorses. It is a cynical move to cover Democrats fingerprints which are all over the energy fiasco and $3-$4 gasoline.
Here is a holy crusade ready to be led by the woman whom John McCain has said would head up energy in his administration. If Palin cannot effectively shred the House Democrats for this travesty and bring the American people to a boil on the subject, there is no issue on which she can lead, there is no place where she can reform.
In a stroke she can free herself of the Lilliputian attacks alleging she is too small for the job and transform herself into a major player on one of the most important issues which confront voters. She can do it with the single issue upon which she is most knowledgeable. It would validate her as a reformer and validate McCain's choice for Vice President. It would put the Democrats entirely on the defensive on an issue where they cannot win if they are only confronted but which they can contrive to camouflage if the McCain camp remains passive or even vague. Promises that we will drill offshore are now not enough. We have this travesty of a bill before us and it is the perfect vehicle to expose the Democrats and illuminate McCain and the Republicans.
Seize the mettle!
At the same time, while Palin is making a very serious address before an important forum on energy focused around the offshore drilling bill, McCain should be scheduling his own attack on the issue of the finance problem in Wall Street and Main Street. McCain's own record on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae looks to be clean and it looks like he timely called for reform. Although he took some money, it does not appear that it affected his posture on reform. The same cannot be said of the whole Democrat elite. McCain should name names and go right after them, Obama not excepted, as one of the largest recipients of taxpayer money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. McCain should hang Lehman Brothers right around their necks. He should indict the Democrats as the authors of the subprime mess.
If McCain does not act now, the show trials in the house, and no doubt the Senate, will make a hash of the politics and put the blame on George Bush, and by extension all Republicans. If McCain does not act now, the media will put the issue away and we might never recover. Obama is already explicitly blaming the Republicans, George Bush, and by extension, John McCain, for the Wall Street meltdown. John McCain has gone on the morning shows and called for an investigation by a "commission."
McCain says he can reform, McCain says he is not afraid, then let McCain for once reform the Democrats. Find a venue, I say, and lay out the indictment, tell the people that it' s the fault of the Democrats, tell them that so long as the Democrats are in power of financial system it cannot be reformed, tell them that we will never clean up Wall Street and we will never get any oil out of the ground so long as Democrats are running the show. Tell them that every well that we do not drill finances another Russian nuclear bomber flying out of Venezuela. Tell them that every well we do not drill means good American jobs languishing. Tell them that every well we do not drill means America gets weaker before its enemies
Forget Teddy Roosevelt and this damned nonsense about greedy capitalists and the need for regulation, instead remember Harry Truman and his righteous indignation about a party that puts itself over country. John McCain, if you cannot hang this around the neck of Barney Frank who opposed the original reform legislation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, around the neck of Charlie Rangel who is a tax cheat and who insisted on subprime mortgages, around the neck of Nancy Pelosi who engineered a sham drilling bill while Americans are being impoverished at the pumps, around the neck of Barak Obama as a Chicago hack on the take from all of them, you ain't no reformer.
That's half the battle, the rest consists of telling the country that the road to recovery comes from cheap energy and transparency not from engrossing government and putting people like Jamie Gorelick in charge of financial institutions where they cooked the books and wrote themselves checks from taxpayer funds for tens of millions of dollars. Real reform comes from transparency. Lay out how you will make it transparent. Show how the Democrats blocked transparency, how they blocked the very hearings which they now demand. Demand an investigation by the Attorney General-not by politicians-because some of this was criminal. Tell Americans that it was not capitalism which failed us but Democrats who have perverted capitalism out of personal greed. Make the case!
John McCain thinks he can skate this controversy by skating around his own party. He cannot. The media will not let him. They will make sure that the Democrats hang Wall Street around his neck.
Consider a day on FreeRepublic: Attacks against McCain and Republicans are made by Democrats and trumpeted in the mainstream media, or they are made directly by the mainstream media. The replies? Too often we read them from publications like National Review or Human Events only too infrequently do we see a major publication like The Wall Street Journal ride to the rescue. We cannot win an election being bludgeoned by the mainstream media and defended only in the blogosphere. Somehow McCain must break into the cycle.
John McCain, you can try if you want to deflect the financial crisis by mealymouthing and telling the people that there is enough blame to go around, or you can tell them the truth. You can win independents or you can throw away the base that you won by your brilliant pick of Sarah Palin. You can make your presidency worth the effort, worthy of the millions who want to put their trust in you, worthy of the commitment you made in your cell at the Hanoi Hilton to serve your country. You can demonstrate that you really understand that reform does not mean sodomizing Democrats, it means putting people first.
Seize the initiative, drive it home and take the election!
