McCain vs. Carter
This picture is not one that will help McCain win in November. McCain has made several attacks against Carter, most recently calling him “a lousy president.” In the past, McCain has made multiple references to Obama as “running for Carter’s second term.“ Although McCain would have at least a fifty-fifty shot if he were running against the 83-year old Nobel Peace Prize winning former President this year, he is wasting his time attacking Carter for a couple of reasons.
First, his current opponent, Barack Obama, is nothing like Jimmy Carter. The two share very few similarities in terms of proposed policies, past histories, and personality. If Obama shares any characteristics that Carter was known for having, they are primarily the good characteristics. Both appear to be pure, genuine Washington outsiders who stand in contrast to particularly nasty times in Washington (Nixon and Bush have several similarities, but Bush only seems to have the bad characteristics of Nixon). Obama doesn’t have the negative images that Carter had. While Carter appeared to some as an intellectual lightweight, most people see the opposite in Obama. Carter appeared weak and indecisive as a Commander-in-Chief, but Obama exudes confidence without aggression.
Second, any argument by analogy that involves Carter can only appeal to two groups: old people, and political geeks. For anyone to have been old enough to vote for Carter when he first ran in 1976, that person would have to be 50 years old today. Since the youngest demographic has always tended to be politically apathetic, it is more likely that the ones who remember voting for Carter back in ‘76 are 62 years old and over right now. For almost the entire rest of the country, any comparison to Carter might as well be an argument in a foreign language. Then there are the political geeks, but any of them should immediately recognize the flaws in the comparison between Obama and Carter.
But the worst impact that this Carter attack strategy has is that it keeps McCain talking about the past. McCain likes to talk about the past anyway, and Carter is really really past. Carter’s policies are really past. Now Carter is old and McCain only looks older by going toe to toe with the former president. That picture at the top of this post is a good summary of what this strategy is doing for McCain.
Good point. But then again, you don’t have to be a political hack or old to know that we wouldn’t want another Nixon. You may not be giving voters enough credit. After all registered voters who actually vote are somewhat educated and at least know something of Carter’s Presidency. Either way, though, McCain’s arguments are bad.
Donnie
27 Jun 08 at 7:55 pm
Ha, you might be right. It wouldn’t be the first time I assumed ignorance existed in the masses.
You are also right about Nixon; his legacy and what he represents is more known to the typical voter. But I think that is because the media talks about Watergate so much. People don’t know anything else about Nixon except for that, and I doubt they know anything about Carter.
I really want to believe in people (my optimistic side is fairly strong), but I have met way too many voters, even educated ones who actually vote, who don’t know anything about politics or history.
I still believe in the potential of people because I think they are capable of doing great things in the right circumstances, but I have no illusions about average voters and their political knowledge.
David M. Manes
27 Jun 08 at 9:16 pm
Hmm. Lets put the KoolAid down for a minute. Of course Obama is not Carter and of course Obama is better than Mccain. That said, I don’t think “pure” is the word we need to be using to describe Obama these days. I spent months and months listen to attacks on HRC because she was too “calculating”. I made it clear at the time that it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for a politician to calculate, but “flip flopping” in a very brief period of time is another matter. Obama seems to be doing this with alarming frequency, and Democrats are held to higher account in the press than Republicans are when it comes to flip flops. The flip flop narrative can go a great distance toward undermining the idea the he is not indecisive. The election is all about Obama. The only chance the Republicans have is to make Obama an unacceptable choice. The flip flop narrative must be stopped at all costs.
And lets not compare Nixon and Bush. Nixon doesn’t deserve that.
jkkuwitzky
28 Jun 08 at 9:38 am
On Nixon and Bush: Ha!
On the KoolAid: Of course Obama has the “pure” image. Any amount of time spent watching the media coverage or reading an article or talking to one of his supporters confirms that completely. Since McCain is trying to connect the image of one to the image of the other, it is important that we don’t let the realities and complexities of either get in the way of seeing how the McCain anti-Carter strategy will fail.
On the flip-flops: I thought we were on the same team, jkkuwitzky. Are you still bitter? What kinds of things is Obama flip-flopping on and are they things that the people will notice/understand/care about? If not, then they won’t undermine his decisive image. (The big one that comes to mind is public financing, but that fails all the second two of the questions because nobody understands the public finance system or cares about it)
David M. Manes
28 Jun 08 at 11:23 am
Much of the luster that Obama’s image had has come off since its post Super Tuesday height. He certainly has his fair share of media sycophants (Olbermann, Jonathan Alter, anyone from Newsweek), but the tenor of the coverage is more critical than it once was.
The public financing flip is perhaps the most glaring example, but his support for the FISA compromise (after saying he opposed telecom immunity when he needed to consolidate the Left during the primaries) has certainly ruffled the feathers of the netroots this week. I think Obama was too forceful in his criticism of the surge and his support for near unconditional troop withdrawals during the primaries (perhaps he needed to do so for political reasons), and its going to be a tough tightrope for him to walk if he wants to moderate himself on the issue for the general (which I think he needs to do). My point is that its easier for the right to start an unflattering narrative about a candidate than it is for the left, and, since Obama has been built up so high in the purity category, he has much further to fall.
Perhaps I am a tad bitter. I think I have reason to be. It turns out that Obama will do what he has to do to get elected. I that thats great. It makes me like him more than I did before. But throughout the primary process i was bombarded with claims from his supporters that he was a paragon of virtue and purity and was the defender of the one true faith. Hillary was lambasted for being “calculating” and practicing “triangulation” (often it seemed that those were sotto voce ways of saying “manipulative bitch”). And what do we find St. Barack doing now that he has the nomination? Shock. Horror. Calculating! Its not the calculating on Obama’s part that bothers me. Its the willful dishonesty of many of his supporters (not accusing anyone here) who equated taking a position for political expediency to kitten genocide and who now seem either blind to reality or find themselves so invested in his success that consistency no longer seems necessary. To the latter I say, welcome.
On Nixon, I’m totally serious. Nixon was a much better president than Bush. I’d even say better than Carter, but our differing views on Mssr. Carter are well enough known.
jkkuwitzky
28 Jun 08 at 12:12 pm
Anthony Palmer runs a really professional blog over at theseventen.com and he wrote a very insightful post about the various Obama caricatures and how none of them seem to be sticking. I think he is right.
McCain and the RNC (as well as HRC during the primary) have tried to label Obama as so many different things, but none of those negative narratives stick. That doesn’t mean that Obama really is perfect (ha!), but it does mean that he has that very valuable Teflon quality about him that protects him from negative labels.
You are right about the euphamisms for “manipulative bitch.” That’s what we were all thinking. And it isn’t necessarily because she is more manipulative/calculating than Obama or any other politician (none of us knows these people personally). It’s just because she didn’t play the game as well as he did. I am glad we have a nominee who plays the game well, because politics is largely a game.
David M. Manes
28 Jun 08 at 1:26 pm
Its a long way to November. The “elitist” charge unquestionably had some effect in the primaries. It remains to be seen whether it will continue to affect swing voters in the fall. Obama has done a fairly good job of defending himself on that issue, but the fact that there is certainly more than a little truth to it means its not going away.
So you admit that the attack on Hillary as calculating from Obama was bullshit? Thats all I ask. Well done on his part. I don’t think the idea that he ran a better campaign in the primaries is in much dispute. That said, the perception that HRC is calculating far predated Obama. It was right there on the tee for him. And lets not downplay HRC’s game playing skills. By the end of the process she was rather convincingly playing the role of working class hero. You’ve got to give her at least a little credit for pulling that off.
The only way the GOP can win is by making Obama untrustworthy, and the flip flop narrative is their best chance to make that case.
jkkuwitzky
28 Jun 08 at 1:38 pm
Ha, Hillary taking shots and beers with the miners and whatever and getting all of the white working class votes was genius political work, no doubt. But it wasn’t enough. She lost pretty significantly, and the only reason it lasted as long as it did and seemed as close as it did was because she kept going long after she had really lost.
Obama is no John Kerry, and he is much better prepared to answer the things that killed Kerry. Swiftboats, flip-flops, and playing defense during a challenging election is why Kerry lost the election he should have won by any estimation. I really don’t think any of those will stick to Obama, and I know he isn’t playing defense this time. There are so many things to attack about the past 8 years of Republican rule in the White House and about McCain’s proposals for the next 4, that this should be easy.
I want to talk individual states sometime and get your preliminary take on what the swing states will do. Maybe early next week sometime.
David M. Manes
28 Jun 08 at 1:45 pm
“lost pretty significantly”? Hmm. Seeing as how he won the popular vote by much less than one percent and won the delegate count by considerably less than the available superdelegate numbers, I’m not sure thats the case. Sure, the conditions that eventually resulted in his victory were in place after the Potomac Primary, but it was always going to come down to the superdelegates. The real contest was not taking place in the primary states, it was happening in DC among the dreaded “insiders” and the weapons were spin and arm twisting. Obama won that competition fair and square, but it was hardly a foregone conclusion.
Obama is obviously not John Kerry, but once a meme gets going its almost impossible to stop. I truly hope that he can win the media manipulation wars. he certainly has a better chance than any Dem in a long time, but the institutional biases that allow Republicans to win the press wars are still there. Since everyone knows that McCain is an independent maverick straight-talker, its certainly impossible that he could ever bend the truth (much less tell ENORMOUS lies all the time).
jkkuwitzky
28 Jun 08 at 1:58 pm
Hi David. Thanks for the compliment on my blog.
I agree that invoking Jimmy Carter is not exactly a strategy for success. Nobody really cares much about Carter, and the people who actually do remember him are in the age bracket that Obama isn’t likely to win to begin with. When I was born, Gerald Ford was cleaning out his desk to get ready for Carter. Reagan was the first president I could actually remember.
Seems like Obama can beat Obama better than McCain can.
By the way, I added Political Cartel to my blogroll under “Right, Left, and Center.” I’ll drop by periodically to see what’s going on over here. Keep up the good work, and welcome back.
The 7-10: Anthony Palmer
28 Jun 08 at 5:03 pm
Top topic of conversation on the Sunday talk shows today? Obama’s flip flops and how that shows he has no “character”. Thats the line of attack, and it has at least a little stickiness.
jkkuwitzky
29 Jun 08 at 11:15 am
The “Flip-flopping” line of attack won’t work this time around for several reasons. Most importantly, any discussion of switching sides on issues is going to go badly for McCain, who has shifted his position drasticaly from the one-time maverick into the fold of the neo-conservatives. Another even simpler reson is that Obama hasn’t been in the political realm long enough to have had many “flip-flops.” Obviously he has changed his mind on some issues, but he has always explained away these shifts effectively.
miniman
29 Jun 08 at 1:37 pm
It also won’t work because Obama is better at playing the game than either Kerry was or McCain is. His machine is bigger, better-funded, and more on-message and he will not let the flip flop label stick.
It isn’t that I think Obama is perfect. I like him and his positions a lot. But I do recognize that he is very talented and his campaign is very well-coordinated.
David M. Manes
29 Jun 08 at 1:44 pm
Campaign narratives rarely have much to do with actual substantive facts (e.g. Al Gore, serial exaggerator). McCain has a decades-long reputation as a straight-talker, which means he is obviously incapable of telling lies. Of course McCain has flipped and flopped worse than Obama (hell, worse than John Kerry ever did). But that isn’t whats important. What’s important is what the media decides to put in place as a the frame through which the entire general election is reported. The question of McCain’s maverickness simply isn’t in question for most of the mainstream press. Count how many times one of a small group of words (independent, maverick, straight talker/shooter) is used in close proximity to every mention of McCain. Its maddening.
The strengths of the Obama campaign are much more organizational and structural (i.e. the realms of David Plouffe) than rapid response and message (David Axelrod’s domain). A strong case can be made that the Obama rapid response performance during the second half of the primaries was actually rather bad (the delayed response to Bittergate, the ever-shifting goalposts of Rev Wright and being caught flat footed on Bill Ayers). And all that was in a contest against a candidate the media by and large did not like.
I think Obama has been in something of a drifting phase since he wrapped up the nomination. The policy transition from primary to general hasn’t been silky smooth. McCain’s flip-flops (can we come up with a better descriptor than that?) have mostly taken place over the course of a much larger timeline, and while they aren’t really disputed this seems to make it easier for the press to dismiss them. Obama’s short career actually makes his much worse, and I disagree that there are relatively few. In addition to the obvious and enormous flip on public financing, his positions on talking to dictators, the Cuban embargo, FISA/telecom immunity, the status of Jerusalem, and the DC gun case have been anything but firm and clear. I’m sure he has plausible explanations for all of these (having to take positions because of something he inadvertently said publicly surely is to blame for more than one), but, at this level of politics, if you’re explaining you’re losing. Its a more subtle version of the Fox News tactic of putting a ridiculous attack as a headline on the screen in the form of a question (”Democrats helping Terrorists kill Americans?”). Having the question posed enough times can be damaging enough.
Also, McCain has been a neo-conservative for quite some time. He was The Weekly Standard’s man in 2000. His position changes have been largely away from his legitimately independent (if intellectually incoherent) domestic views toward a more orthodox GOP party line.
jkkuwitzky
29 Jun 08 at 4:07 pm
“His position changes have been largely away from his legitimately independent (if intellectually incoherent) domestic views toward a more orthodox GOP party line.”
Which may seal his fate? I’ve noticed lately the insistence on the fact that a reelected John McCain is 3rd term for Bush. Perhaps its a bit of a stretch (Personally, I don’t see them too far apart, from a policy perspective), but it’ll certainly gain ground with the “disenchanted, hope-filled crowd.”
I think people perceive Obama like a Twinkie; when they bite into him, it’ll be a palatable, creamy surprise. On the other hand, the McCain perception is like a jelly-donut without the filling — a very disappointing experience.
I, on the left foot, am increasingly becoming too athletic and diet-conscious to crave high-caloric pastries. Although the the idea of a cream-filled, golden ecstasy in my mouth is enchanting.
S.C. Denney
29 Jun 08 at 8:40 pm
You are crazy, SC.
David M. Manes
29 Jun 08 at 9:06 pm
“I, on the left foot, am increasingly becoming too athletic and diet-conscious to crave high-caloric pastries. Although the the idea of a cream-filled, golden ecstasy in my mouth is enchanting.”
That’s straight-up gay porn right there, Denney. Ick! Just sayin’…
But seriously, does anyone here actually believe that Mac can beat Obama?
Are Obama’s flips (yes, we need new terminology) as egregious as Mac’s incoherence, his own flips, and his perceived attachment to W and W’s war?
Unless “they” turn up photographic or video evidence of BHO rubbing elbows with OBL, then I’m calling this election for the Brother now…
gino
29 Jun 08 at 9:10 pm
58-42%, mandate.
S.C. Denney
29 Jun 08 at 11:07 pm
… also, I am with Kolby on this one. Comparing Nixon to Bush is wholly unfair to Nixon. Nixon was a complicated mastermind, someone who took it upon himself to critically analyze every foreign policy move from a cost-benefit, realist slant — often driving himself to the brink of sanity in the process.
Nixon was a borderline-genius with a nasty war handed to him, which he handled in the best way he thought possible (which was, admittedly, not all that great). Although he was certainly not a puritan, nor a man-of-the-people, he was a smart guy, despite Vietnam and Watergate.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I don’t think Bush parallels Nixon in many ways, if any.
S.C. Denney
29 Jun 08 at 11:24 pm
Between these two only, Nixon was a giant and Bush II is a dwarf.
Donald S. Manes
2 Jul 08 at 10:30 pm