By James Carville
Published: October 30 2008 19:30 | Last updated: October 30 2008 19:30
The most predictable and fascinating ritual of American electoral politics has begun. And, no, I am not talking about early voting or pundit predictions. It is not last-minute robo-calls or get-out-the-vote operations either.
I am talking about finger-pointing. Yes, the blame game. In case you have not noticed, it is in full tilt.
You may think the blame game is played in smoky back rooms and dark alleys. Be under no illusions. The blame game is not merely a sideshow of the drama of the world’s most influential democracy, which elects the world’s most influential leader. In the coming weeks, watching the Republican party implode will be the main event.
The opening salvo was fired in the op-ed pages of the US newspaper of record, The New York Times. On October 13, William Kristol drew his guns in what he believed to be the start of the Republican civil war by beginning his weekly column: “It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign.” He continued: “Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic.”
Such an esteemed conservative intellectual would, of course, place blame on the “McCain campaign”. What a convenient target. This is the same Mr Kristol who advised the party in two of its greatest disasters – the Iraq war and the selection of Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican vice-presidential nominee. His idea is to point the finger at political professionals.
My colleague, Paul Begala, and I counselled Republicans on October 20 that the blame game could not begin soon enough and could not leave out any faction of the fractured Republican infrastructure. With so much blame to go around, I am sure everyone will get their own shots in but the people who work on the fringes of our democracy should not bear the brunt of an entire American political party going awry.
Allow me to rise in defence of my fellow political operatives.
The truth is that there was little Mr McCain, or his campaign, could do with a party falling apart at the seams. When Mr McCain announced his second run for the presidency on April 25 2007 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the Republican brand was already tarnished, perhaps beyond repair. At that time, a poll for Democracy Corps, a non-profit polling organisation I co-founded, found that his party was viewed more negatively than positively by far, with 47 per cent of likely voters giving it poor marks and just 34 per cent viewing it positively. At that point 66 per cent of likely voters thought the country was on the wrong track. Of course, it only got worse as the campaign and George W. Bush’s horrendous presidency trudged on. Our latest poll finds that 79 per cent say the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Remember, it was not Mr McCain’s campaign that started the idiotic Iraq war or masterminded the poorly thought out strategies there and on the economic front at home.
It was not his campaign staffers that reignited ridiculously divisive and unnecessary culture wars in 2004 just to win an election, in the process alienating a generation of young Americans.
It was not a campaign staffer that simply flew over a major American city as it was being inundated with water after the failure of federal levees created one of the worst disasters in our nation’s history.
It was not a McCain staffer who made the brilliant choice to appoint Alberto “Fredo” Gonzales as attorney-general, a man who will surely go down as one of the most buffoonish and incompetent individuals to serve in the US government.
It was not just a few McCain staffers who sold their soul and their political party to corporate America and Wall Street while the national debt soared.
It was not McCain campaign staffers who sat idly by as America plunged into its greatest crisis since the Great Depression. (Although one might pause here to note that Mr McCain and his economic advisers played an active role in creating the crisis over the past few decades.)
Blame the idiotic neocons, absurd culture warriors or the talk-radio crowd. Certainly do not forget the silly free-marketers who are now lining up before congressional committees to apologise to the nation for failed economic policy. Believe me, they all deserve every bit of of the blame.
But it was the pillars and icons of the party who did this: from Karl Rove, its self-proclaimed resident genius, to Dick Cheney, an overreaching vice-president, to Mr Bush. Of course, lest any of this read as an absolution of Mr McCain, the senator from Arizona was in lock-step with his colleagues on most or all of their failed policies.
Ultimately, the truth is that Mr McCain’s campaign was dealt an awful hand, albeit one he had a role in creating. You can second guess how they played it (and you should) but campaigns take chances (like they did in doubling-down on Ms Palin) when they are behind. So with only a few days to go before the party is handed its second mammoth loss in as many cycles, following the 2006 mid-term elections, my counsel to Republican friends would be to keep pointing fingers but lay off the political professionals as much as possible. They were not the ones responsible for the disastrous Bush-Cheney-Rove policies that Americans so desperately want to reverse.
The writer is an international political consultant, founder of Democracy Corps, and a CNN political contributor. He was chief strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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