I had another thought about John McCain: Americans have a weakness for following electoral politics like sports. McCain ran for President twice, reaching the finals — the general election — only on the second try, in 2008.
2. The 2008 race — the one McCain, burdened by the Bush administration’s toxic unpopularity, had next to no chance of winning — is the one most Americans remember. But his 2000 primary challenge to Bush was more significant. It was a turning point.
3. G. W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, had a big advantage over McCain as a former President’s son. He inherited most of his father’s donors, and had enthusiastic support among white evangelicals. He entered the race as a near-prohibitive favorite for the GOP nomination.
4. But McCain was a skilled retail campaigner, & had perhaps the best rapport w/media covering him of any modern politician. He made up ground in polling against the well-funded but inarticulate Bush in late 1999, & won a stunning victory in New Hampshire to start the primaries
5. Outgunned financially by the Bush campaign & savaged by negative paid media, McCain saw his momentum evaporate in South Carolina & in Southern primaries thereafter. Was there ever a realistic chance he could have won? Maybe, maybe not.
6. The Republican Party took an ominous term under Bush’s leadership. Deeply engaged with the mechanics of campaign politics but shallow & uninterested in most major policy issues, Bush pioneered government for supporters of and donors to the Party,...
7...while presiding over a succession of disasters that decimated the credibility of the Republican establishment his family represented. Bush’s Presidency was wonderful for any number of DC careers, and lucrative for major Republican donors. It was a disaster for the country.
8. Neither Bush himself or the Republican Party under his leadership showed any of McCain’s capacity for reflection & self-criticism. The chasm opened between Party pros and donors on the one hand, and many rank & file Republican voters on the other, never closed.
9. It is tempting to think a McCain Presidency beginning in 2001 might have maintained the credibility of the Republican Party establishment, closing the door to demagogues like Trump. I believe this might actually have happened; I have no illusions about just how negligent....
10...Bush and his team were about many aspects of the policy process compared to the Democratic administrations that preceded and succeeded him. Honesty compels acknowledgment that McCain became a vocal supporter of the dubious wars Bush began & could not finish.
11. McCain, as well, was fully as lost as Bush was during the 2008 financial crisis. A national security specialist by experience & inclination, McCain may have matched Bush’s feckless willingness to let the financial services industry regulate itself throughout the 2000s.
12. It’s disquieting, though, now that McCain is gone, to contemplate an opportunity the Republican Party had to embrace as its leader a man with none of the Bush family’s ferocious sense of entitlement, one who could talk without prompting about service and sacrifice...
13...on behalf of causes greater than oneself. It was an opportunity missed not just by the Party, but by the country. [end]
@threadreaderapp Please unroll.
