May 13, 2006 -- The Day that John McCain Lost the Election

Yes, it is a year for change. Yes Barack Obama knew that before most other politicians and capitalized on that with a unique and brilliant campaign that offered inspiration and principle to us in a consistent and explosive manner. We will elect him as our President tomorrow because he offers our country the best chance for the revival we desperately need.

But, May 13, 2006 is the day that John McCain lost the 2008 Presidential Election. My friend Mike Berman reminds me that that is the day he spoke at Liberty University. In my view, that day began the destruction of one of the best brands in American politics. It is the day that Senator McCain went to kiss the ring of Jerry Falwell, a right wing preacher who McCain had called "an agent of intolerance" in 2000. His visit's purpose was to court the evangelical voters and apologize for being the independent maverick he had been over the course of the last 15 years. He minimized the importance of the high visibility issues where he had broken with his party such as immigration, election reform, federal spending and the anti-gay constitutional amendment on marriage and promised that he would be a leader that the right wing could support and trust.

Earlier this year, many Democrats feared running against one candidate in this presidential Election - that candidate was John McCain. He was the one candidate in the Republican primary who everyone hoped wouldn't win. Sure the deeply unpopular Bush Presidency created an atmosphere that favored Democrats this year. But many assumed that given McCain's special brand of independence, he was the one candidate that could distinguish himself from the President.

But May 13, 2006 changed John McCain in two key fundamental ways that have poisoned his campaign and doomed his chances to ever become President. It soured the media on him and it empowered the evangelical right at a time when their overall influence in the country was dwindling.

He minimized his differences on immigration, on election reform, and changed his support in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy. He began to support every anti-gay initiative he could find. On those and so many other issues, he merged into the George Bush and right wing clone that in these closing days of the campaign have choked him beyond breath. In short, he sold his soul to gain the nomination of his party. When he chose Sarah Palin and made the ultimate sacrifice to the right wing choosing a VP candidate who would energize the evangelical base but clearly lacked his standard of quality in public policy, it cemented his changed persona forever.

Many republicans complained that the media has favored Barrack Obama in this election. In effect they are forgetting that it was John McCain who perfected media relations in his last Presidential run in 2000. Yet those same media allies soured on McCain as he became more and more of a political robot in the Republican message machine and the authenticity they had experienced with him was lost as he tumbled into a pool of right wing muck. It was unattractive for him to court those who had previously dissed him and he had rightly rejected as putting their prejudice and narrow-mindedness above a unified and prosperous country. And his campaign handlers knew that he could no longer provide the access t the media that had once been his hallmark because there was just too much to challenge him on. A once guileless politician suddenly had his true beliefs to hide.

Didn't he know that his uniqueness for his friends in the media was that he didn't fit into those stereotypes for a politician? That his original brand of maverick - rather than the empty word it has become - was exactly the kind of candidate the media would have continued to revere? Perhaps they even would have more aggressively challenged the upstart heir to the outsider brand - Barack Obama - if the original was still around?

And didn't he realize that just as he was concluding that he needed the right wing zealots to win the Presidency, the country had already started to reject their falsely premised "values based" agenda?

No, John McCain didn't understand how a trip to Lynchburg, Virginia on May 16, 2006 would doom his presidential dreams forever.

Follow Hilary Rosen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hilaryr

Comments

[shanedr]

Bingo

[super]

May 13, 2006 may have been the day he lost us liberals, but it is HARDLY the day "that John McCain Lost the Election!" As Gib said, "That was the day the mask fell." But Bush didn't become president with the votes of us liberals. John McCain might be winning even today if Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke had just managed to stave off the economic meltdown for another couple of months.

[hosshoss777]

Taxing the oil companies? No, that will devolve into raising the gas tax on drivers.
Illiminate Tax on Social Security? No, that will devolve into reduced benefits for future retirees and tinkering with the COLAS
Competitive Health Care? No, Insurance companies have to big a hold on both parties for any reasonable, for us, reform to ever occur. Obama may propose, but the Congress, whatever the Majority, will not attack the corrupt status quo in the Medical-Pharmaceutical-Insurance Industry.
War in Iraq? 2011, is the latest proffer from the Military Establishment who will make the call for either Obama or McCain,, you know, the old Commanders on the ground dodge.
Afghanistan and Pakistan? We're already denying troops leave and tour ends to send them back in there, and you're actually in favor of that?

[TheIndependenceParty]

When the klieg lights revealed to the American People just exactly who John McCain was, and to what depths this man would stoop in his desire to be president, ... at that moment he was revealed, and not corrupted as you seem to describe.

A brand which is baseless and so easily corroded in the pursuit of the ego, is not a brand, but "bait and switch". The irony is that we have scam artists from different parts of the same party, who have defrauded one another, ... Palin betraying McCain in pursuit of a fantasy of leading the Republicans in the future, and McCain himself wangling his way ahead of all the contenders. There seems to be no end to betrayal among Republicans. Sad.

Aren't we lucky that we learned what McCain would do in office, by revelations about what he has done on the road there? Fine brand indeed.

[Soundofthunder]

McCain lost the second he started playing kissy face and huggy bear with Bush. Dignified that was not. Pandering and positioning for 2008 it was. The Liberty U speech was just part of McCain's overall plan to sellout to the Bush base. Palin was this plan brought to full and rotten fruition.

SOT

[proudliberal4truth]

Love your politics and your eloquence. Your signature log off though, is unfortunate :)

[L3ftofC3nter]

John McCain is a narcissistic opportunist of the worst kind. There are no two John McCains. There is only the one and he's always been a jerk.

[pons1595]

Amen! Amen! Amen....

[jukesgrrl]

Insightful, as usual, Ms. Rosen. Many good things have come out of this campaign in addition to a new president and you are one. You've been a shining light of sane commentary throughout this very
L-O-N-G process. I always read your comments here and keep a TV station on if I see you on a panel. Even when I don't agree with you I admire your thinking. Thanks for your efforts.

[lawyerfan]

The long lines at the polls began weeks ago in Arizona. I drove by the county recorder's office the other day and there was a line of several hundred people waiting to vote. And something tells me they weren't all waiting to vote for their favorite son. I too began to lose my respect for McCain when he abandoned his criticism of Falwell's gospel and let Bush bamboozle him out of mounting an all out attack on torture.

[CroyofBushCheney]

It will be interesting to see how the religious right fits into the newly reconstructed Republican party, the reshaping of which I think will enevatably take place after this election. John McCain has never been someone I really gave much attention to. But now that I have had to watch him, I have concluded that he is a megalomaniac with delusional aspirations. It is obvious that he has run a sophomoric campaign. He chose a lightweight for a running mate, and chose campaign managers who are loyal to him in some way other than bringing him a winning campaign. I didn't know the "old John McCain" to have a point of reference, but, I have little respect for someone who needs to throw hail mary passes as he throws American voters under the bus to win this election. His choice of Palin, suspending his campaign to help pull us out of the big socialization of America's financial institutions, changing his campaign theme weekly or daily- all of it is just too dizzying for a country of voters looking for virtuous leadership. Obama is a 21st century politician. He has defined a paradigm to be examined by anyone wanting to be successful in almost any endeavor. The person, the campaign, and the ideals of Barack Obama make him someone America has hopes in. Erratic is a proper description of McCain, steady as a rock is Obama. McCain-Palin,thanks, but no thanks, to that campaign to nowhere.

[NationalTreasure]

+Hilary:

why do you persist in perpetuating a myth that McCain is or was a lovelable maverick?

a careful look at McCain's 26 year voting record countermand's your argument and as you well know McCain did not start to go center right until two years before he ran for president in 2000

Hilary you know how meanspirited and nasty McCain has been to staffers on the Hill as well as to his collegues.

McCain has never been a maverick and it is very well documented, what McCain has been is a politician who befriended the press and the main stream media promoted McCain as a maverick because they "like his biography," although they are very selective on portraying his biography in a very skewed manner that is beneficial and they myth or McCain being a maverick

McCain self admits that he has gone along more than 90% of the time with Bush and McCain record from 1982 to 1998 shows McCain went along party lines more than 93% of the time.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ross-tuttle/mccain-vs-nuclear-safety_b_140409.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print

[Tiriel]

That Rolling Stone article is fascinating and a must read. Thank you for recommending it.
Remember the Forrestal!
Remember the Midway!
Think of your country,
And Vote for Obama!

[gbw1954]

He lost this election the day Bush stole 2000 from Gore... took awhile to get folks organized but Johnny... you done drew the short straw. And from 2006 you have been doing everything you can to rally the base on the left. Over time we will probably forget your lack of new ideas and bouncing all over the place without a strategy but the one thing we will remember and you will to... Sarah Palin... what the hell were you thinking? I was for Obama from the beginning. Sarah Palin inspired me to volunteer for the Obama team. From the look of things it appears she rallied quite a few people the same as me.

[peterg76]

That and the selection of Sarah Palin were symptoms of desperation. These were choices made not to persuade Democratic voters to change their mind, but to ensure people who were going to vote Republican anyway to show up and actually vote.

[HurryUp1212009]

When you sleep with dogs, Senator McCain, you get fleas....

[HurryUp1212009]

The next Republican President of the US will be the first Republican to basically tell the "Religious Right" (neither) to Go To Hell, then completely ignore them and pursue the center. These lunatics are such a small segment of the population, and they have nowhere else to go, since the Democrats sure don't want them within 10 feet. I grew up a Republican but abandoned the party in the 1990s when Pat Robertson invaded, then hijacked, the party with his neo-facist viewpoint. Reagan, Bush I and Bush II pandered to these phonies, giving them far more power than they deserve. Their intolerance of other religions, like Romney's, is disgusting. They need to be shoved back under their rocks, so we have a vibrant, inclusive two-party system again. And Palin? She would represent further regression to the extreme right, thereby guaranteeing irrelevance for the Republican Party for another 4 years and a certain Obama re-election.

[dessertsfirst]

Wow! well articulated...
You aren't alone, either.

[canucklivinginUSA]

I remember that day, I was flabbergasted. I had always seen John McCain has the type of Republican that I could support. Not overtly religious, sane, and self-deprecating. He threw all that away for this election. This election has forever changed my mind about him and thats too bad