Favorably comparing McCain to Bush

April 21, 2008

I’ve been trying to keep up, at least passively, with the various back-and-forth attacks from the Clinton and Obama campaigns in Pennsylvania yesterday; as far as I can tell, it’s about as ugly as we’ve seen it since the first few days in March. Worse, Obama’s campaign has been far more negative than usual, which a) suggests its internal polls show him slipping in the state; and b) made the entire weekend rather unpleasant.

There was, however, one especially odd story from yesterday.

Senator Barack Obama likes to tell his audiences that electing Senator John McCain would be the equivalent of giving President Bush four more years in the Oval Office.

Here [in Reading, Pa.], he did so again [yesterday], declaring: “That’s what John McCain is offering, a third Bush term.”

Yet as he offered his closing words at a town meeting at Reading High School, after he delivered a speech and took questions for 40-minutes, Mr. Obama offered a different view of Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

“You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain – and all three of us would be better than George Bush,” Mr. Obama said. “But what you have to ask yourself is, who has the chance to actually, really change things in a fundamental way?”

Wrong. The whole point of the Democratic message is that McCain is just like Bush, not that he’s better than Bush. Indeed, as recently as Wednesday’s debate, Obama said there was “no daylight” between McCain and Bush on the nation’s most important issues. Obama stepped on his own message with an unhelpful stray remark.

But Hillary Clinton’s response to Obama’s comment was just as annoying.

Indeed, this was just foolish.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking at a campaign rally in rural Pennsylvania, repeated Mr. Obama’s remark to the crowd.

“Senator Obama said today that John McCain would be better for the country than George Bush,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Now, Senator McCain is a real American patriot who has served our country with distinction. But Senator McCain would follow the same failed policies that have been so wrong for our country the last seven years. Senator McCain thinks it’s O.K. to keep our troops in Iraq for another 100 years. Is that better than George Bush?”

As people in the crowd shouted, “No!” Mrs. Clinton added, “We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain, and I will be that nominee.”

Look, Obama’s line was very unhelpful. Worse, it was careless, undisciplined, and off-message. It makes perfect sense for the Clinton campaign to pounce. But we need a nominee who will “take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain”? Really?

Because it seems to me the single most troubling thing the Clinton campaign has done all year was praise John McCain for having the experience necessary to be president, for passing the “commander-in-chief threshold,” for being a “moderate,” and even for being right about global warming.

Who’s been cheering on John McCain?

For what it’s worth, it didn’t take too long for Obama and his team to realize he’d said something unhelpful. Obama spokesman Bill Burton soon after told reporters, “It’s hard to imagine a president doing a worse job than President Bush but one thing is clear, John McCain wants to do his best to emulate Bush’s failed economic and foreign policies and even his divisive political tactics.”

Obama only said it once, at one campaign stop. He went a little off-script. Big deal.

  • Given the higher level of negativity from the Clinton campaign towards Obama, it’s not unreasonable for him to start countering that with attacks on Clinton. If you don’t fight back and only defend yourself, you can come off as looking weak.

  • Yeah, I’m not getting this at all. Saying he’d be better than Bush, well, duh. Bush is abysmal, it’s not a high bar to be better than the worst. The fact there’s a term limit is one of the happiest things about this election. I guess I can’t figure out the horror and outrage.

    I mean, I expect it from the Clinton campaign, because it’s all they do, but lordy, it’s not like he said that he’d make a perfectly great commander in chief or was more experienced than Clinton, right? He just spoke like a normal person without always being on the extreme of every opinion. Shocking that.

  • It’s like saying cleaning the dirty litter box would be better than not. Now, there’s no promise that it would ever get cleaned again by McCain, but at least there would have been a day or two of slightly cleaner air.

    Not my best analogy…but hey, I’m tired.

  • D’oh! Satan would be better than Bush.

    The difference is that Obama stated that all 3 would be better than Bush. Clinton eluded to McCain being BETTER than her opponent.

    Big difference

  • Look, Obama has seemingly always tried to be gracious. it’s why his campaign never reached the level of negativity about Clinton that hers reached about him. The McCain-is-better-than-Bush comment was an unfortunate continuation of that, for two reasons. One: You don’t want to give McCain an inch, not a friggin’ inch in this fight, Be gracious to his supporters, that’s fine and dandy, but not the man and not his agenda, it will only ever bite you on the ass, You don’t have to hit him on a personal level, but you shouldn’t praise him either. And 2: In order to be gracious to McCain, he’s being ungracious towards Bush. Granted, it’s not like any rational human being wants to or should be “nice” to Bush, but the right-wing spin machine who claim to be better Americans than mods or liberals (or as I like to call them, patriotards) is looking for any chink in the armor, and for them to be able to say “look, Obama is saying anyone’s better than Bush, ergo he heates Bush ergo he hates America!” will only inspire the stupidest members of their camp to pony up even more money that they can’t afford to McCain or at least a GOP 527.

  • McCain very well might not be as bad as Bush. While he shares many of his faults, at least McCain is against torture (even if inconsistent when it comes to voting), is more willing to admit that global warming exists (although we don’t know if he will actually do anything more than Bush), and doesn’t get along with the religious right as Bush does (although he sure does pander to them).

    I don’t really care all that much if someone wants to say that McCain is not as bad as Bush, or if they believe he is as bad. We won’t really know unless we are stuck with him as president. Regardless of whether McCain is as bad as Bush, this is a nonsense political issue. Whatever Obama said about this has zero meaning in terms of deciding upon who to vote for. However, the manner in which Hillary Clinton has tried to turn this into a major campaign issue only highlights once again why we need an end to her type of politics. It’s the final day before a major primary and the morning news concentrated on this attack from Clinton. Doesn’t she have any better final messages to voters with regards to reasons to vote for her?

  • Steve, Can you give some examples of Obama’s “negative” attacks on Sen. Clinton, or explain how his campaign is engaging in these types of attacks more than usual? (I ask this sincerely.)

    The traditional media has the tendency to lump all negative attacks together, as this fits nicely their consistent (and annoying) “pox on both houses” narrative.

    Whereas Sen. Clinton’s attacks have often been personal- questioning Obama’s ability to reach a Commander and Chief threshold, accusing him of being elitist and condescending to working class Americans (a classic GOP attack on Democrats), and questioning his patriotism, Obama’s “attacks” seem to be focused more on her policies (i.e. Healthcare) and criticize Clinton (and her campaign) for engaging in the politics of division and personal destruction (i.e. Sen. Clinton will say anything to get elected).

    I am certainly not saying that Obama is perfect or without fault (some find his attacks on Clinton’s health care plan to be unfair and misleading as well); however, it would be helpful if you provided examples of the types of “negative” attacks Obama has engaged, and if you distinguished those attacks (if distinguishable) from the types of attacks coming from the Clinton camp.

  • I dunno, saying that any other alternative would be better than George W just seems logical. The man has redefined “worst” asymptotically.

  • Message to Hillary:

    STOP IT! STOP IT! PLEASE JUST STOP IT!

    I normally don’t e-mail in all caps, but I’m so fed up. Please, Pennsylvania, vote for Barack if for no reason other than to just make this nasty little woman be quiet.

  • McCain doesn’t have to actively be worse than Bush. All he has to be is inactive and letting the Bush poison continue to destroy the country by not taking action against it.

  • It is cynical in the way Clinton is pouncing Obama on this but he was truly stupid for saying this. It just seems to me that Obama suffers from foot in the mouth disease or something. He says something (his comments about punished with a baby, having more foreign policy cred than McCain and Clinton, etc.) and then his team has to run a press release to explain what he actually meant.

  • Steve,

    I think you’re wrong on this one. If Obama were to flatly state that “John McCain is just like George Bush — there’s not a shred of difference between them!” — how hard would that be to disprove to the average voter? Bush has set some sort of cosmic standard for BAD. He’s mega-bad. Epic-bad. Bad to the bone.

    McCain? He’s a former POW. He’s the guy who wanted limits on political contributions. He’s the guy behind the surge, but against the Rumsfeld plan — meaning he’s the guy who’s pro-victory, but anti-incompetence.

    Granted, Dems want to paint him as the next Bush, but I think saying he’s just as bad would be overreaching, and I think voters would think so.

    Does it require a little nuance to say John McCain is not as bad as Bush, but that electing McCain would be like giving Bush a third term? Sure. It’s not brain-dead simple, but I think people get the idea. If you want cyhange, vote Dem. If you want the same, vote McCain.

  • Go ahead and say McCain is worse than Bush. What’s he gonna do, deny it?? “How could I possibly be worse than… I mean…”

  • Hopefully by the end of tomorrow the die will be cast and the Queen of Gutter Snipe will fade off into the sunset albeit slowly. Then the personal negative ads will start and we will have i worse stupidtiy from the Republicans to avoid discussion of the culture of corruption and distruction of Americans rights that have occurred in the name of loyalty to pustulence.

  • There was once a possiblity, because certain areas of the state that vote consistently Democratic get more delegates, that Senator Obama would ‘do a Texas’ on Pennsylvannia and get more pledged delegates out of it than Senator Clinton.

    Last nail in the coffin.

    I don’t think that’s going to happen now, hence the rise in negativity from the Obama Campaign.

    If they have timed it correctly, they will get their cuts in before the blowback on them for being so negative (less than the Clinton Campaign, admitedly). But somehow I don’t think it’s going to help.

    Steve is right that Senator Clinton’s comments on not giving McCain an inch are ammusingly hypocritical. But then, it is the position of this blog and its commentors, so we shouldn’t complain that she has come home.

    I’d buy the notion that Senator Obama wants to be ‘gracious’ if he’d stop complaining about ‘DECADES’ of Washington failing Americans. Somehow I don’t think a man who buys a 1.6 Million dollar house gets to complain that Washington somehow failed him.

    I wrote recently about how the Clinton Administration gave us millions more jobs and a $7000 increase in real median incomes and asked how that consititutes ‘failing America’. The answer I got was that even during the Clinton Administration the rich got richer and the income gap increased. That’s it.

    You have to be a pretty moonbat Leveler to want to make the Rich poor before you accept that Washington has served America well.

  • Clinton seems to want to have it both ways. She’s an idiot for pouncing on this after all the compliments she’s thrown McCain’s way. And I’m sure Obama will be all too happy to point this out.

    MLC @ #10: Agree 100%.

  • Unfortunately, the polling data suggests that late undecideds in PA are breaking for Clinton. This means the likely outcome of tomorrow’s primary will be a 6 – 12% margin for Clinton. I guessing 8 – 9% in favor of Clinton. Unless, of course the young voters turn out in enormous numbers to vote for Obama. That might take it to a 5% margin.

    Obama’s comments about McCain probably did not help him close the deal in PA…but then again, they probably really did not hurt him either.

  • Definitely steps on his message a bit, though I’m not so sure he doesn’t benefit by baiting Clinton into the trap of saying it is bad to ‘cheer’ on McCain. What Clinton said about McCain was far more cheery than what Obama said. The critical part of what Obama said, though was “Either Democrat would be better than John McCain…”

    Hillary certainly wasn’t saying that when she was talking about McCain’s lifetime of experience. Only recently has she, seemingly begrudgingly, said that Obama would be better than McCain.

  • What Obama said seems pretty much incontrovertible to me. Who among us doesn’t think McCain would be better than Bush?

    If you accept this premise, then what you’re left with is, “Well, yeah, but he shouldn’t have *said* it.” Why not? Because the public is so dimwitted that they can only accept absolutes–you’re either the Bestest Preznit Evah or the Chimpenfuhrer? Bull.

    The Democrats won’t win this thing by demonizing McCain. That’s the exact wrong approach to take. First of all, it’s a continuation of Rove/Carville, Clinton/Bush tactics: everything is to the extreme, and every contest is a Manichean, life or death struggle in which Everything Is At Stake. What that does is force everyone to dig in deeper; it pushes moderate Republicans and independents who have fuzzy fondness for McCain back into his corner, because when you say he’s as bad as Bush, you’re insulting them too.

    Second, people like McCain. Hell, I like McCain. I’d never vote for him and I don’t want him anywhere near the center of power, but that has fairly little to do with him: I just don’t like the idea of another president who cedes his budgetary policy to a psychotic asshole like Grover Norquist, won’t fully repudiate Bush, and is willing to countenance the likes of Bill Kristol.

    The Democrats need to nail McCain to Bush–to make his unwillingness to repudiate Bush the anchor that sinks him. Holding that he’s a good man in thrall to awful policies is the way to do that–and it subtly erodes those positive associations people have with him by raising the notion that he’s selling out to stay in the good books of people like Norquist and Hagee.

  • Somehow I don’t think a man who buys a 1.6 Million dollar house gets to complain that Washington somehow failed him. -Lance

    I don’t think he’s speaking of personal gain when he talks about Washington failing America. That’s a cheap shot.

    You can certainly disagree with Obama, but he’s not alone. A lot people do feel that Bill Clinton’s administration was a mixed bag, and some things, like NAFTA had a more detrimental and long term effect than anything positive he accomplished.

  • Bascally he was saying ANYBODY would be better overall, but that McCain would be the next closest thing in terms of policymaking.

  • Look, Obama’s line was very unhelpful.

    How so? As long as people are talking about which Republican will be regarded as history’s bigger screw-up, that’s helpful for Democrats.

  • I would go with “worse than Bush”. Not sure why Obama would give McCain any credit, he is really an unknown.

    I spoke with a bright college student over the weekend. Hard to say exactly which way he would vote, if at all. But he ‘thinks’ that McCain has military experience that would help him as president.

    I asked for specifics:

    He: When you carry a gun into combat…

    I said McCain was an Air Force pilot, he didn’t carry a gun or shoot anyone.

    He: Well, he was a POW.

    And? How do you get experience from being locked in jail?

    He: Just being in the military, you learn that you should listen to your advisors… and Bush didn’t do that.

    No, Bush found advisers who agreed with him. (Probably McCain will be worse, since he probably thinks he knows something.)

    McCain will be worse than Bush, if for no other reason than the public will assume he knows what he is doing, and so will McCain.

  • Somehow I don’t think a man who buys a 1.6 Million dollar house gets to complain that Washington somehow failed him

    Why? Did Congress buy him the house?

    I get that you’re being willfully obtuse, Lance, so have fun with that. But given the electoral realities that you have to be at least somewhat obscenely rich to run for president these days, the argument that a well-off candidate can’t complain on the behalf of those who aren’t is just ludicrous. The media loves this stupidity — Edwards doesn’t really care about poverty because he got a $400 haircut!!!! — but it’s still stupidity.

    Franklin Roosevelt was loaded and an old-school patrician — dare I say, a member of the elite — and he seemed to deliver just fine for working-class folks.

  • What Universe do you people live in? Obama has been gracious? Right. Implying nonstop that the Clintons are racist, the most disgusting smear of the season. His wife saying she might not vote for the democratic candidate. His supporters spitting venom like a cobra on meth. Not to mention the shallow media smears, which you all ate with a shovel. Congratulations for replacing policy debate and adult conversation with name calling and childish insults.

  • I suspect that Barack Obama does not see either John McCain or Hillary Clinton as his enemies, just three fellow-Americans running for the presidency. I may be really off in my inference, but I thought he intended it as a quick stroke of respect for all three of them.

    Yet his statement brought out the beast in Hillary once more, causing her to stumble and fall once more. He certainly didn’t say he and McCain would be better presidents than Hillary, though she was quite oozing with charm when she claimed that she and McCain had many qualifications to be CIC while Obama just had a speech.

    I not only think McCain is just like Bush, not that he’s better than Bush, but I think that Hillary would not be much better than Bush, on foreign policy, executive privilege, International and American Human Rights Law, Iraq, Iran, Constitutional matters, and all else that she supported and enabled Bush to illegally achieve.

    Just saying…

  • Of course McCain would be better than Bush — though as Robert Frank of the Reality-Based Community points out, given the fact that “61 percent of 109 historians recently surveyed by the History News Network said they considered George W. Bush the worst president ever” this is hardly high-praise. In many of the most important ways he’ll be “McSame,” yes, but at least he lacks Bush’s theocratic leanings. We aren’t going to find a government staffed by graduates of Liberty University, a ‘faith-based’ initiative — which routinely turned down applications from non-Christians — or regular Monday conferences with whichever preacher hasn’t disgraced himself recently.

    I also think that McCain is more honest and will crack down on at least some of the corruption and petty crminality that seemed to pull down so many appointees.

    Yes, if the election was between McCain and Bush, we’d all be supporting McCain. Only it isn’t.

    And was Obama wrong to say this? I don’t think so. I have noticed a level of subtle genius in the Obama campaign that sometimes, I think, goes over the head of commenters — as with the Dan Rooney announcement.

    George Bush is and should be the main issue in this election. The one thing Obama’s comment did — along with the WBE’s expected reply — was to focus attention on Bush this weekend, rather than the absurd trivialities that HRC tries to make issues. By saying “Better than Bush” it has gotten everyone talking about how bad Bush has been. This can only help Obama, both in Pa and in the long-run.

  • Why does the exalted “message” have to trump obvious reality? Whatever McCain’s flaws, he would be far better than Bush, and Obama was right in saying so.

  • Actually, I don’t think this one’s going to hurt Obama very much. By “cheering” for McCain (apparently, Chillary doesn’t have the political gumption to remember doing the exact same thing—repeatedly), Obama sets the message as being “the top priority is to get Bush out of the WH.” It’s a message that just about everyone (except for Cheney, Rice, and the Wingnut Hatemonger Authoritarian Knuckledragger Klan Organization—WHAKKO for short) will agree to, so it’s a message that has the potential to be on most peoples’ minds tomorrow when they vote. Will it work? Maybe—and maybe not—but it’s sure worth the attempt.

    Besides—Obama, by using that message, took the political high-road away from both McCain and his evil underling in Dem costume, McsameSame. There’s been a glut of negativity and outright false commentary coming from those two as of late, and there’s been a great deal of discussion amongst the People about it.

    I look forward to tomorrow’s contest—and I think the Clintonians are in for a rather rude mauling at the hands of Pennsylvanians….

  • Obama slipped with the truth.

    For one thing, McCain won’t pick Cheney for Veep.
    I also don’t see McCain coddling “loyalists” when the totally flake up.

    It’s HARD to be the worst president ever.
    I have no faith McCain can manage that level of bad. Senile or not.

  • It may have been inadvertent, but it caused Hillary to pounce on it, and in doing so she needs to make the argument, directly or indirectly, that McCain is WORSE than Bush. That’s going to cause her husband some heartburn; didn’t he say that they are rather cozy and that if they remain in the race together it will be all civilized? And it also forces her to dys McCain publicly, which is a pretty different front than what we have seen so far. She implied, at one time, that McCain was better prepared than Obama, and now she’s trying to argue that he’s worse than Bush. It’s difficult to create a slot there for her estimation of Obama, other than it’s pretty low. It’s not going to help her in the continuation of the primaries if she is trying to garner support from McCain to triangulate against Obama, unless McCain feels the same way about himself, and he is a Bush worshipper. Maybe it was a good move after all.

  • doubtful said: “You can certainly disagree with Obama, but he’s not alone. A lot people do feel that Bill Clinton’s administration was a mixed bag, and some things, like NAFTA had a more detrimental and long term effect than anything positive he accomplished.”

    Do you really think it is appropriate for Senator Obama to tear down the last Democratic Administration just because some people feel it was a mixed bag? And if so, doesn’t his doing so qualify as old style politics? And if so, doesn’t that mean he is not really that different from Senator Clinton?

    Senator Obama isn’t changing the politics, just the players. That may be all you want, but don’t be confused that you are getting anything more.

    The difference between Roosevelt is that he was born into wealth, Kerry married it (as has McCain), and Obama and Edwards made theirs. When an administration supports policies that allow that to happen, you have to make a better case against it than people feel NAFTA was bad or you are unhappy that while everybody got richer, the rich got richer faster.

  • …”Wrong. The whole point of the Democratic message is that McCain is just like Bush, not that he’s better than Bush.”

    Well, leaving that aside for a moment –
    What’s wrong with the topic being changed to whether or not McCain would be an improvement over chimpy?
    Isn’t this just the kind of BS that the Old Media might pounce upon? …while forcing at least some relevant discussion about real qualifications instead of jewelry.

  • Do you really think it is appropriate for Senator Obama to tear down the last Democratic Administration just because some people feel it was a mixed bag? And if so, doesn’t his doing so qualify as old style politics? And if so, doesn’t that mean he is not really that different from Senator Clinton? -Lance

    Well, you’re nitpicking. I shouldn’t have said ‘feel’ like you highlighted. A lot of people we’re hurt by policies of the Clinton administration. Yes, I do feel it is appropriate. It’s not old style politics to speak honestly about the past. Clinton was no saint and his administration was not as successful as people seem to remember it. I think a lot of people are comparing it to the administrations which surrounded it; which is to say it’s accurate that it was better than those, but it can be convincingly argued that they weren’t as good as they could’ve been. I see nothing wrong with pointing that out and actively striving to do better.

    So I apologize for using the word ‘feel,’ which you seem hung up on. How about this: lots of people we’re fucked by the Clinton administration. Some literally, some not so much, but in the end, the job policies he enacted are culpable still today for what Ross Perot termed the ‘giant sucking sound.’ Is fucked better than feel? You want to find out how much people ‘feel’ Clinton fucked them? Go to a UAW meeting and find out how many of them vote Republican and why. NAFTA. And that’s just one thing that I brought up. I think Cleaver has posted a more complete and emphatic list on more than one occasion.

    It wasn’t all gumdrops and roses and not talking about it doesn’t make it so.

  • Haha. I have no idea how those bold tags got on ‘we’re,’ but I do love how it is highlighting my grammatical error. Thanks for making me look like an idiot, mystery tags!

  • doubtful said: “Clinton was no saint and his administration was not as successful as people seem to remember it. I think a lot of people are comparing it to the administrations which surrounded it; which is to say it’s accurate that it was better than those, but it can be convincingly argued that they weren’t as good as they could’ve been. I see nothing wrong with pointing that out and actively striving to do better.”

    You know, not to knock a democractic administration or anything, but Carter wasn’t all that successful either. So what you are saying is that the most successful administration over the last 20 plus years could have been better.

    But the differences between Obama’s policies and Clinton’s are miniscule. So clearly, if either of their proposed policies are good they pretty much both are. Which leaves us to the conclusion that we are deciding on either who is more likely to get those policies enacted or we are deciding on which one is more likely to be lying about actually wanting to enact those policies just to get elected.

    Which one sent a campaign representative to Canada to promise he WASN’T going to scuttle NAFTA?

  • Look, I get the hypocrisy point you’re making. But at the same time, if we look at the larger fight here rather than the primary battle, the point is to beat John McCain. Is each candidate required to go on making the mistake of being too soft on McCain because they made that mistake once before?

    I know we’re interested in consistency, because it belies real and firm principles on the part of the candidate (at least, that’s what I’m looking for when I look for consistency). But consistency can’t be elevated into a virtue in itself, or we end up with fossil politicians, with the “flip-flopper” argument that was used successfully against John Kerry, and with issues that are not really issues.

    Hillary made a dumb comment. Is she not to go after McCain now? I would hope that both she and Barack would be able to learn from their mistakes in this and far more serious arenas. As for whether the swipe at Obama on the way was wrong or unjustified–she is trying to beat him, too. I would be not at all surprised to see him do the same were the roles reversed, and speaking as someone who vacillates but tends to lean towards Clinton, I would be fine with that. It’s a contest. The general and ultimate target was still McCain.

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