In 2004, the Democratic convention nominated John Kerry right before the 2004 Athens Olympics. Kerry does his, “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty” speech and spends the next 3 weeks being swiftboated. He loses the election.
In 2008, the Democrats wait until after the Beijing Olympics to hold their convention. Obama holds his acceptance speech at a huge football stadium to rave reviews. The next morning, John McCain steals Obama’s spotlight by announcing he’s selected Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Was the pick of Palin a political tactic to make the Republican ticket the center of attention over a weekend which would have been dominated by Obama’s speech? If the Democrats would have held their convention in late July before the Olympics would McCain have felt less need to do something mavericky?
I do think that McCain picked Palin in order to knock Obama off the news. The Sunday talk shows would have been full of coverage of Obama in front of the crowds at Invesco Field in Denver. Instead, McCain got to dominate the Labor Day weekend with, “Who is Sarah Palin?” coverage.
If the Democrats would have held their convention in late July, McCain would have sat on the sidelines for 3 weeks knowing that the news would be dominated by Michael Phelps, Chinese censorship, and young Chinese gymnasts for 3 weeks. Then, McCain could have announced a running mate and anyone he picked would have given him news coverage heading into the Republican convention.
The timing of her announcement was made to steal Obama’s thunder from the Democratic convention, but the pick itself was made because McCain was down in the polls and didn’t know how to fight Obama.
She did exactly what McCain expect her to do - only in the short term. She dazzled the conservative base and made McCain’s campaign more exciting. McCain just didn’t study her long enough to realize she had some problems; one of them being that she was bad at doing interviews, and you know the rest.
If the Democrats had their convention at another time, then the VP might have been announced at a different time, but it would still have been Palin. McCain just didn’t think that decision through.
I don’t think it really matters, as no matter who he picked I think he still loses in the end. Personally, I still think Palin was a good move on his part, as it got him some buzz and interest in what was otherwise a pretty boring run for the presidency. McCain simply didn’t have a chance against Obama, regardless of who he picked. JMHO of course.
I’m not so sure about that. Up until about the time of the Palin pick, Obama and McCain were pretty much neck and neck in the polls. Then suddenly McCain’s numbers started plummeting. Now, it was also right around then that he said that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong”; it could have been either, or a combination of both, that really hurt him. And I suppose it’s even conceivable that the people were just coming to like Obama better, and would have suddenly started breaking for him around that time anyway. But to the extent any conclusions can be drawn, it sure looked like the Palin pick hurt him.
Well, MMV…personally, I think that at that point Obama and his campaign really started to take off, not that McCain’s started to plummet. I think that Palin, perhaps, was novel enough to spark some renewed interest in McCain, but that the die was already cast, etc etc.
Agreed. The “fundamentals of our economy” thing really started to tank the campaign, made him look old and out of touch.
Normally, if your opponent is a black guy, adding a token minority to your ticket to counteract the potential historic-ness of him winning would seem like a really cheap move. McCain was so far behind, though, that they gave it a shot. At first, it worked, then she opened her mouth. And then McCain “suspended his campaign” as a stunt to try and counteract his “fundamentals” gaffe, which was such an obvious stunt it may have hurt him more than many people consider.
To answer OP, I think choosing Palin was entirely reactionary. A reaction to the campaign climate as it was that moment. If you change any variable at all, it’s a good chance we’d have never heard of Palin.
McCain really wanted Lieberman (supposedly a democrat) as his running mate, but the GOP honchos wouldn’t allow it. That would have been interesting to see, a one-sided-split ticket.
Though, it would have been two old white guys vs Obama. Good luck with that.
I agree with the varying views of what went wrong. It had been a long 8 years of Bush and the country was weary of it: 7 full years of war with no end in sight, the economy starting to really suck. McCain, always being the kind of gambler to take long odds and great risks to win (hey, he lost about 5 aircraft and never got killed in those kinds of risks) says the fundamentals of the economy are strong and Lehman goes belly up with Merrill Lynch looking to do the same, picks Palin, “suspends” his campaign, etc.
Had any of these gone the right way, McCain might have looked like a big hero/genius, but they all went wrong. Usually the case with drawing to an inside straight, but not always.
The best Republicans can hope for is one of: (1) Obama fails miserably all on his own; or, (2) That they have left enough burrowers in enough places to screw up the country really bad and blame it on Obama; or (3) a combination of both.
All Obama has to do is pass health care and suddenly 47 million Americans are invested in his success and the Republicans spend the next 12 years regrouping.
The question concerning the reason for the Palin pick has been answered definitively in a book “The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election” which Washington Post used as a base for an interesting article.
The OP nails the timing for the announcement.
But as outlined above, it wasn’t just the timing, it was that they realized they were facing a losing election and they needed something bold.
McCain lost because of the economy. Palin was a good pick, since she was glamorous and interesting, which Biden and McCain certainly weren’t and aren’t. I don’t think anyone expected that that MSM would attack as relentlessly as they did - one would have expected at least a bit of fairness as window dressing.
If the recession had held off for one more quarter, McCain/Palin would have won by a small margin. Now that it appears the recession is starting to reach its end, mostly because of the TARP bailout and tincture of time. Obama benefits from this, even though he had rather little to do with it, McCain would have done the same.
The only possible improvement might be that McCain would not have pushed a ruinously expensive and largely (apparently) unneeded stimulus package, and I have little hope for that much common sense from an estabishment Republican. Possibly Palin, who has cost-cutting experience from Alaska, might have enabled this, but a VP does not have that kind of influence, IMO.
I think that when McCain “suspended” his campaign to go to Washington and negotiate the bailout was a key moment that spelled his doom, though it will never be remembered as such.
If things had worked out differently, he could have been viewed as very statesmanlike and presidential, but as it worked out, he looked like an impotent, doddering old fool.
But I agree with others. He was gaining no traction with anything and this, along with the Palin nomination was necessary to try to get something to stick.
I don’t know why, but I am surprised that there still is anyone, even the likes of Shodan, who can still suggest such positive qualities about Sarah Palin.
They are complete fiction, and this has been revealed to everyone but the most partisan at this point.
However, don’t let me dissaude you from running Palin as the candidate in any and all future campaigns.
Shodan is right: Palin was “glamorous and interesting,” until she opened her mouth. Then the glamor went away (did none of her Communications profs suggest that she’d be more marketable as a TV anchorwoman if she took an elocution class?) and she became interesting, but more in a “follow a drunk driver to see what he hits next” way.
To the OP, personally my feeling is that McCain’s main issue was in raising money. He didn’t have enough to put on an effective campaign against Obama, and that perverted his entire run.
During the primaries a politician needs to sell to his own people. Once he’s swung the nomination, he has to get all the people on the middle and maybe even some on the other side to go for him. The centrists decide the election, every election, and that’s a really simple idea to understand.
But coming out of the booth, even leaving Palin aside, everything McCain did and said was targeted to the Right. Either he was very stupid–which is unlikely–or he was so strapped for cash that he had to pander to his own side just to stay in the race. Palin would, ideally, have saved him from that position by getting money while he went out to attack the middle. But I suspect that didn’t work for some reason or another. Either that or it did and he turned to the middle, just to be overshadowed by the Pink Demon.
But so in either case, he was doomed unless he could have found someone more charismatic himself who wouldn’t turn most of the nation against him like Palin did.
Palin was a sop to the hard right, the crowd that always doubted McCain’s Purity of Thought and were suspicious that his Maverick brand really just meant he was a Secret Liberal (if only Fred Thompson had been as dynamic in Iowa as he had been pretending to be President in the movies, oh well!). McCain needed the sop because he was continually lagging behind Obama’s fundraising, and the hard right wanted proof of McCain’s conservative credentials to loosen their purse strings. So, I say, no matter when McCain announces, it would have always have been Palin or someone close her political nature. If you want to know who else that might be, you should probably ask who was No. 2 on Bill Kristol’s VP list.
