John McCain’s hurdles are obvious: he’s running as a conservative Republican at a time when most Americans are anxious to break with conservative Republicanism. He doesn’t know anything about economics; his foreign policy vision has been completely discredited; his campaign platform includes almost nothing in the way of new ideas; and he probably won’t have a lot of money, especially compared to the Democratic nominee.
But as the Politico’s Jonathan Martin explained the other day, McCain does have an “unorthodox strategy” to persevere.
Facing the prospect of competing against a Democrat who is on track to shatter every fundraising record — and confronted by his own inability to rake in large bundles of cash — McCain and his key advisers have largely been forced into devising a three-pronged strategy that they hope can turn their general election weaknesses into strengths.
McCain will lean heavily on the well-funded Republican National Committee. He will merge key functions of his campaign hierarchy with the RNC while also relying on an unconventional structure of 10 regional campaign mangers.
And finally — and perhaps most importantly — McCain will rely on free media to an unprecedented degree to get out his message in a fashion that aims to not only minimize his financial disadvantage but also drive a triangulated contrast among himself, the Democratic nominee and President Bush.
It’s that last point that’s the most interesting. It’s premised on an interesting assumption — that McCain can distance himself from Bush, and that the media (“McCain’s base”) will help him do so.
The latter seems likely — McCain can safely assume fawning media coverage for the rest of the year — but how does one “triangulate” against an incumbent president while running on the president’s identical policy agenda?
Apparently, by ignoring the issues and focusing on style.
“People in the country are in a very bad mood, and they want to have change,” says Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to McCain. “And the first place they evaluate change is through the prism of what kind of campaigns candidates are running. Voters will have an indication of the different kind of presidency he would preside over by looking at his campaign.” […]
McCain aides also want to paint their guy as different from an unpopular administration that prefers secrecy to transparency and friendly crowds to unpredictable ones.
“Sen. McCain believes every American should participate in the arena, and that includes people that don’t agree with him,” Schmidt says, taking care to note that such unscripted exchanges have waned “in the last decade.”
Additionally, McCain and his advisers want to pursue voters that look different than the bare majority coalition that Bush put together twice.
“We’re running a campaign that is not designed to get 50-plus-1 percent of the vote,” says Schmidt.
How very odd. McCain is promising voters a Bush-like agenda on the economy, a Bush-like agenda on foreign policy, and a Bush-like agenda on federal judges. But they’re in no way similar, the argument goes, because McCain isn’t as secretive as Bush and he won’t apply ideological litmus tests at public events.
Maybe I’m misreading the public on this, but to borrow Schmidt’s line, voters are “in a very bad mood, and they want to have change,” but the kind of change they’re looking for has very little to do with obsessive secrecy and Bush’s “Bubble Boy” policies. People are in a very bad mood because Bush’s policies don’t work.
And those are the very same policies McCain wants to continue until 2013.
“Triangulation”? I don’t think so.