Obama vs. McCain

Richard Baehr:

I know John McCain does not go down easily among many conservatives. But with Barack Obama looking like the victor among Democrats, his party needs the Arizona Senator at the top of the ticket.

Conservatives may decry his support of campaign finance reform (a mistake to be sure -- it simply moved the money around to new vehicles, but with less disclosure of contributors), his opposition to the size of the Bush tax cuts, his support for the Bush immigration plan, his embrace of global warming fears. But this is the reality ten months before the November election: if the Republicans nominate anyone other than John McCain, they are doomed to defeat against Barack Obama, maybe even a decisive defeat. McCain on the other hand, has a real shot at winning against Obama.

For a while, I thought Rudy Giuliani could also win. But his ideal match-up was against Hillary Clinton, not Obama. Rudy's campaign has also been damaged by a steady drip of opposition research leaks, coming from candidates in both parties and publicized by a journalist rat pack, that have cumulatively eliminated his lead in the national polls. In a Rudy-Hillary race, the warmth factor would have been lacking on both sides (who do you want to sit down and have a beer with?), but Rudy could have won on his toughness and resilience after 9/11 and his record as Mayor (which trumps Hillary Clinton's bogus claim of 35 years as a change agent -- 20 of them as a first lady!).

One of the questions the Giuliani team needs to ask itself is why they relied so heavily on 9/11, and spent so little time highlighting Rudy's record of accomplishment as Mayor in New York City, where he turned around a dangerous, declining city, and made it world class again by bringing back a sense of personal security and safety. Cutting the murder rate by over 70% was a very big deal. The Mayor had a "surge" strategy of his own in the use of his police force as Mayor, and as in Iraq, it worked.

...

So how does McCain beat Obama? Obama has his weak spots, and over ten months we can expect some to come out. Look for GOP ads of Bill Clinton telling Charlie Rose that Obama is untested and not ready to run the country. This has the virtue of being true. Obama is three years removed from the Illinois State Senate, and half the time he has been in the US Senate he has been running for President. A case can be made that US Senators and House members who run for President should resign their seats. That is what Bob Dole did, very honorably I think, in 1996.

On national security and foreign policy issues, Obama is a novice, and already has made some telling mistakes during the campaign, including his support for pre-emptive action in our ally Pakistan, the very thing he opposed in Iraq, and his misstatement in the debate Saturday night on why the violence was down in Anbar Province in Iraq. Obama said the violence has ebbed in Anbar because of reconciliation between Sunni and American Forces once Iraqis read the results of the 2006 congressional races in America. In fact, what happened is that Iraqi Sunni insurgents turned on foreign Al Qaeda fighters. No less an authority on the subject than Osama Bin Laden has decried the Sunni insurgents for their treacherous behavior.

Obama has made it his signature issue that he was right on the Iraq War by opposing it from the start. But if he were President, he would need to follow-through on his pledge to end the war. And if he is in against McCain in the fall campaign, there is a huge opening for McCain to talk directly to the American people about our mission and how to wind it down with dignity and honor, and with success. That success has come from the Bush Administration's belatedly rejecting the Rumsfeld light footprint approach and accepting McCain's call for troop reinforcements ("the surge") to re-establish security, the precondition for a political solution.

...

McCain's biggest challenge may be to get nominated. Mitt Romney may not drop out, even if loses a string of primaries, and his money supply is effectively unlimited. Fred Thompson may hang around hoping he can emerge as the consensus choice among conservatives, if Huckabee fades. Rudy Giuliani may get some momentum back in Florida and in the big state races on February 5th. But Republicans may want to heed the words of Bill Clinton and Bob Beckel, both very savvy Democrats, on the one Republican the Democrats do not want to run against this year- John McCain. McCain runs much better at the moment against every Democratic opponent than any other GOP candidate.

...

A McCain Obama race would be something of a dilemma for the media having to choose between their two darlings. My guess is they would go with their liberal bias and throw McCain overboard. McCain could run a formidable race against Obama on the war issue alone. The Democrats and the media would be flummoxed again thinking the war would be their issue and finding it is their problem instead. In someways it could be a repeat of how John Kerry's "war hero" strategy backfired in 2004. Baehr and others have pointed out the Anbar gaffe which I have posted on at length here. It is an issue that the regular media cannot ignore forever. It will get focus when McCain and others call Obama on the gaffe.