VDH's Private Papers::Campaign Season 5

February 12, 2008
Campaign Season 5
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner

Friday, February 08
Thoughts on the Current Mess

There were four developments that got conservatives into this mess — the inexcusable increase of federal spending from 2001-05 (that gave mendacious Democrats room to fabricate that the tax cuts had caused the red ink), the sordid scandals of 2005-7, the tentativeness in the war (cf. the 1st pull-back from Fallujah, the reprieve to Sadr, the retreat to compounds in 2006, etc.), and the complete unwillingness to close the border. McCain was involved with only one of these.

On these four critical issues, would McCain be far better than Clinton or Obama? He is good on earmarks and pork barrel spending, and hates deficits; he is without scandal and, while terribly wrong on McCain-Feingold, is a corruption fighter; and he is aggressive on the war and wants to win. The problem with his prior support of immigration "reform" was not just that it would lead to ever more illegals and make a mockery out of past federal law, but that he either ignored criticism or impugned the motives of those who were genuinely worried about open borders and the travesty of the law, but themselves were neither racists nor without compassion.

So on 3 of 4 critical issues, McCain in strong, and on the 4th he is now on record in speeches and ads that he would close the borders first. His views on religion, abortion, gay marriage, guns, etc. please mainstream conservatives; on global warming, Guantanamo, campaign financing, etc. hardly.

How then to recapture the base? I don't think the attitude "they have nowhere else to go" or "we don't want to lose moderates by moving right" will work, especially if Obama is the nominee.

It would be better to get a base conservative on the ticket. And when you look around at the necessary requisites: youth to balance McCain's age; strong base support; energetic; an experienced campaigner; not afraid to mix it up; geographical balance; economic experience and Wall Street fides; you inevitably keep coming back to Romney.

He would unite the party, not just by gaining the VP spot, but by acknowledgment that he would then be best positioned to assume the top spot after McCain. It would reassure conservatives on immigration, tax cuts, etc. And Romney's last two weeks of speeches revealed a charismatic figure unlike that seen most of the campaign.

Their animus is no greater than between Bush I ("voodoo economics") and Reagan in 1980, but would be a genuine gesture on the part of McCain, to think of the base and swallow his seeming anger at Romney.

The alternative is a Republican loss, and likely increased Democratic control of the Congress and soon a trifecta with the Supreme Court.

We would witness a new generation of European-like tax increases, unnecessary new programs, negotiated or unilateral surrender in Iraq, loss of what has been achieved in preventing another 9/11 (a return to the Sandy Berger/Albright response to terrorists in the late 1990s when our embassies were leveled and Pakistan got the bomb), 2-3 far Left Supreme Court justices, and the race/class/gender industry given official sanction.

The idea that feuding conservatives would each not make some sort of concessions to prevent all that is lunatic.

Friday, February 08
Al-Andalus Was Actually Bigger Than We Thought?

What are we to make of the Archbishop of Canterbury's amazing concession that the implementation of Sharia Law in the U.K. was "unavoidable"? A couple of things: what will happen when the U.K.'s PC multiculturalism collides with Muslim anti-gay rulings? Is hanging someone (cf. the thousands of homosexuals who went to the gallows in Iran the last 30 years) just 'different' and needs only to be contextualized?

And one could argue that Christendom's clergy at least put up a fight in North Africa in the 5th and 6th centuries before being overwhelmed, and that there were priests on the walls of Constantinople on that terrible day May 29, 1453 — but Archbishop Rowan Williams seems to be welcoming in the end of the Church and the Enlightenment all at once in a sort of 'if you can't beat them, join them.'

Wednesday, February 06
The Die Is Still Cast

Andrew, please read carefully what I actually wrote. I was not "summing up the opposition to Senator McCain as that he "was not a real war hero, questioning his conduct during capture, commenting on his marital situation, and suggesting he was unhinged and identical to Ted Kennedy, Hillary (fill in the blanks)."

What I wrote was this: "But so far today I have gotten the usual daily spam e-mail from various fringe and self-acclaimed conservative groups and personages - variously alleging that McCain was not a real war hero, questioning his conduct during capture, commenting on his marital situation, and suggesting he was unhinged and identical to Ted Kennedy, Hillary (fill in the blanks)." Note again the operative words "fringe" and "self-acclaimed". But that being said, I think it was in the Corner itself, where the number of planes lost under McCain was a topic of debate.

I just reported various groups' ratings like ADA, ACLU, ACU, without trying to contextualize them. Second, my point about McCain's illegal immigration ad today puts him on the public record for closing the border first. Perhaps he has to confirm that ad nauseam to regain credibility on that issue, but his recorded voice was pretty clear. Third, I stand by my point that the rhetoric has reached such a level that a number of people have made it very difficult for themselves to vote for McCain, given what they have already said.

Again, as an observer, I think it is valid that to state that while those criticizing the anti-McCainites can sound condescending, the anti-McCainites, at least as represented by blogs, cable news, and talk radio, are by far the angrier — perhaps because those Republicans who prefer McCain would be happy to vote for Romney, but the inverse may not be true.

This, as Andrew points out, may have something to do with McCain's past temperament; it must, since the same anger has not quite been shown Bush or Giuliani or Romney (or Reagan no less) for their past liberal transgressions, from massive spending, to pro-abortion, to sanctuary cities for illegals. As well as negative chemistry, timing also played a role: no one thought Giuliani would implode so quickly, or that McCain would recover so dramatically, or that Romney would only in the 11th hour finally give good speeches and make good ads, or that the conservative Thompson would fizzle, or that conservatives would have no natural candidate among so many who ran.

Again, on judges, I think McCain would be far better than Obama or Clinton, maybe not as good as Bush's two, but perhaps better than two of Reagan's three.

On taxes I think not raising them is not as good as cutting them, but far better than raising them — as Obama and Clinton have already promised with income, estate and payroll taxes.

To sum up: given the Democratic advantages, it will be very hard to beat them. Bill Clinton's blunders and Obama charisma have given the Republicans a small window of opportunity. But if enough believe that on judicial appointments, taxes, illegal immigration, the war, federal spending, and social issues like abortion, there is essentially no difference between McCain and Obama/Clinton, or not enough to nullify their worries about his disposition, and therefore stay home, then the candidate will lose and there will be only more acrimony over whom gets blamed — and we can expect a second 8-year Clinton regnum.

I was offering a diagnosis and a prognosis, mostly post facto since I think most, unfortunately, sound like they already have made up their minds.

Tuesday, February 05
The Die Has Been Cast

Like many I prefer McCain but will gladly support Romney if he wins the nomination. His campaign ad here in California against Hillary's inexperience was excellent, and so was McCain's on his new views on illegal immigration.

But so far today I have gotten the usual daily spam e-mail from various fringe and self-acclaimed conservative groups and personages — variously alleging that McCain was not a real war hero, questioning his conduct during capture, commenting on his marital situation, and suggesting he was unhinged and identical to Ted Kennedy, Hillary (fill in the blanks). I think for most the level of vituperation is astounding and completely unforeseen.

I have no idea of whether the moderates that McCain would pick up will be outweighed by the conservatives who sit out or vote for the Democratic candidate. Nor do I have any notion of how many McCain supporters — and this is never discussed — will be so turned off by the present assault on their candidate that they would likewise sit out if Romney won. (I've talked to a lot of blue-collar Democrats [not in a think tank, but here in rural southern Fresno County] that say they would vote McCain, but so far not one who said they would cross over for Romney; and likewise a lot of Republicans who claim they will never vote for McCain.)

Instead I make only a couple of observations:

1. The McCain animus apparently transcends ideology. He has admitted his mistakes on immigration, and would not raise taxes, while his ACU ratings are good, and his ADA/ACLU scores are lousy — nearly the exact opposite of those of Obama and Clinton. Again, the anger apparently derives from his gratuitous past snubbing of prominent conservatives (especially the notion that a rude McCain didn't need them then, but a conciliatory one does now) and can't be assuaged. At this point, I take the base's claims they will sit out — or that Hillary or Obama is no worse than McCain — as genuine.

And given their furor expressed so far on the record, it would be almost impossible for them to recant, and they shouldn't be defamed or coerced to try. No doubt they will lead the charge in a year or two against the liberal Supreme Court nominations of a President Obama or Clinton, or payroll and income tax increases, or a timetable withdrawal from Iraq. Just as McCain is trying to win them back now, they will try to win back then those who are turned off by the venom expressed against the likely Republican candidate. In either case, it will be nearly impossible to do so.

2. Among the anti-McCain camp there has been a willingness to contextualize the prior Reagan pragmatism and apostasies on amnesty, taxes, nuclear disarmament, foreign policy, the creation of larger government, and judicial appointments. And the same generous consideration of context is used to explain Romney's rather amazing liberal stances on the Reagan legacy, gays, abortion, etc. in his 1990s political career in Massachusetts.

It is clear that pragmatism or expediency is not seen as a sin greater than erroneous conviction, in the sense that it is to be understandable that Romney had to do or say some liberal things in blue-Boston to get elected, but that McCain did them willingly when he did not have to in red Arizona. Or maybe it is the magnitude of the sin (McCain-Feingold is felt worse than once being pro-choice and distancing oneself from Reagan)? Or perhaps the chronology of the sin (the 1990s were then, 2007 is now)?

Either way it doesn't really matter anymore, the McCain animus is deeply ingrained and apparently can't be retracted. It only makes things worse either to attack sincere anti-McCainites or to ask them to reconsider, or to ask them to vote for the lesser of what they see as the two evils.

As they say, the die has been cast, and everyone will have to live with the results.

Tuesday, February 05
Oprah, We Hardly Knew You...

At the impressive California weekend rally for Obama, I think Oprah Winfrey's talk was nevertheless odd to say the least — and entirely skipped by the media. She seemed to be mimicking, through a sort of mock-wimpy intonation, those (mostly white elite?) feminists who were shocked about her endorsement of Obama. And then she started rousing the crowd in a sort of loud faux-gospel mode, answering to her critics that she was "a free woman!" and then went more into the edgy Jesse Jackson type old-time campaigning style.

The problem with all that is that she created her $1 billion empire precisely by appealing to a mostly staid white suburban therapeutic audience, to whom she is used to talking in precisely the same flat-toned neutral manner that she was this weekend apparently mocking.

Oprah should remember that Bill Clinton's desperate attempts to create a post-presidential image above the fray is now in shambles due to his finger-shaking partisanship. The Maria Shriver, Oprah, Mrs. Obama, et. al. rally certainly found an audience, but the subtext was that Obama offers the establishment (i.e., white majority) a second chance at redemption: that somehow not asking that he produce a platform or run on a record, and instead vote on his status as our first serious minority candidate is a way for all of us to at last get it right. Ever so insidiously his campaign rallies, ostensibly devoted to inclusion and not about race, are starting to devolve precisely into race by the assumption that voters have this chance to do something right and historic rather than compare his record, abilities, and agenda with those of others. Perhaps this is precisely what Bill Clinton wished Obama would do when he first played the race card.

As a footnote, I'm confused by Mrs. Obama's assertion that she and the Sen. just recently paid off their student loans, proof positive, she implied, that the government is doing too little to enhance educational access. But the Obamas live comfortably, and like everyone make choices. Two tuitions to Harvard Law School, or two BAs from Harvard and Princeton are neither cheap nor an entitlement. A better example would be the working-class employed student who goes into debt to pay the cost at Cal State Turlock, and ends up not as a Senator, author, or Ivy League lawyer but an indebted government clerk or entry-level teacher.