Running Right

Obviously, to some extent a bad result for John McCain was just baked into the cake of the underlying political fundamentals. His loss was predictable. But still, a black candidate. And a “maverick” Republican who was, when this race began, the most broadly popular elected official in the United States. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

But McCain barely even tried to take advantage of the fact that, when the race began, he wasn’t closely identified with the rotten GOP brand. Of course when he decided he wanted to be president, the first thing to do was to start running to the right in order to win the primary. That’s what you do. And that’s what he did. And it worked — barely — he won, albeit in a way that relied on a lot of independent and crossover votes. Then having won the primary, you want to tack a bit to the center. That’s how the game is played. And it’s especially how the game is played when your party’s image is terrible.

But McCain didn’t do it.

On the climate/energy/environment issues where he really had staked out an unusual position for a Republican, he moved right during the primaries and then moved even further right during the general election, embracing drilling and coal as the centerpiece of his agenda. He shed his image as a moderate on cultural issues with the Palin pick. And he didn’t make up for those rightward thrusts with anything else. Instead of trying to undue the damage to his brand that was caused by shifting right during the primaries, he compounded it by continuing to move right, closing the campaign by dogmatically insisting that run-amok inequality is the essence of America (or something). Now does that mean that being too conservative on energy or abortion was “the” reason he lost the election? Of course not. But he clearly needed to separate himself from the GOP brand. Since he was, in fact, a Republican doing it in a convincing way would have required some wrenching, risky moves. And he just didn’t do it — he just kept drifting further into the warm embrace of the conservative cocoon.