There were plenty of political obituaries written for John McCain eight months ago, when his campaign was struggling to make payroll, the senator’s top aides quit, and he could no longer afford a campaign bus, which all looks rather amusing in hindsight, given that he’s now the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
So, how’d he turn this around? Ross Douthat makes the case that McCain got really lucky.
[M]uch of what’s happened to make McCain the presumptive nominee has been luck, pure and simple. He was lucky, to begin with, that George W. Bush lacked an heir apparent – no Jeb, no Condi, no Dick Cheney – who could unite the movement establishment against him.
He was lucky that Mitt Romney was a Mormon. He was lucky that Fred Thompson, a candidate who might have succeeded in rallying both social and economic conservatives against his various heresies, was out-campaigned by Mike Huckabee, whose appeal was ultimately too sectarian to make him a threat. He was lucky that Rudy Giuliani ran an inutterably lousy campaign. (More on this anon.) He was lucky that Mike Huckabee won Iowa; lucky that the media basically treated that win as a McCain victory (though obviously his skill in cultivating the press made a big difference, in that case and many others); lucky, as David Freddoso suggests, that Huckabee decided to campaign in New Hampshire and (taking my foolish advice) Michigan instead of going straight to South Carolina; lucky that Giuliani decided not to campaign in New Hampshire after Christmas; and lucky, finally, that Fred Thompson decided to go all in against Huckabee in South Carolina, thus delivering McCain the Palmetto State and with it Florida.
And he was lucky, above all, that his strongest challenger was a guy that almost nobody liked — not the media, not his fellow candidates, and not enough of the voters, in the end.
That sounds about right, but I’d add just one more thing.
McCain was really lucky that he tanked in the late spring — before anyone was really paying attention. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re pretty politically engaged and far more informed than the typical voter. But it’s worth noting that when McCain’s campaign was declared a joke back in, say, April, the 2008 presidential race was not at all on the national radar. Americans just weren’t engaged — it was far too early — and they didn’t know and didn’t care that McCain’s campaign was experiencing an embarrassing upheaval.
Consider the national polls, just as a gauge. By the early summer, when the conventional wisdom insisted that McCain stood no chance, he was running second, behind a guy whose campaign was largely vaporware. How’d he do that? That’s just it; McCain didn’t have to do much of anything — the Republican rank and file already knew him, recognized what he brought to the table, and most of them liked him. He didn’t need commercials or the buzz from The Note; he was John McCain, and that was enough. That, plus the undying adulation from reporters covering the campaign, was more than enough to carry him through a “recuperation” period.
From there, it was simply a matter of waiting until everyone else collapsed. Giuliani was a joke candidate, Huckabee was a niche candidate, Thompson was a lazy candidate, and Romney was a Mormon candidate who was moderate-to-liberal up until a few minutes ago. And with that, McCain, through process of elimination, was the last man standing.
Sometimes, it really is better to be lucky than good.