If this is the direction in which John McCain wants the campaign to go, Democrats are even luckier than I had hoped.
As he did Tuesday night, McCain focused much of his criticism on Obama, Tuesday’s winner on the Democratic side.
“I respect him and the campaign that he has run, but there’s going to come a time when we have to get into specifics,” McCain told reporters Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “I’ve not observed every speech he’s given, obviously, but they are singularly lacking in specifics.”
Now, as we discussed the other day, the claim that Obama lacks specifics is, on its face, false. Obama’s campaign has presented detailed policy prescriptions on almost every issue under the sun. If McCain wants to argue that these policies are wrong and offer alternatives, more power to him. But to pretend they don’t exist is just silly.
But the more important point is that McCain is going after Obama on one of his own biggest weaknesses. We’re talking about a candidate who’s running on a powerful personal story, but whose understanding of policy details is almost Bush-like. Last year, for example, McCain explained his position on Iraqi reconciliation this way: “One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.'” This is what passes for “policy specifics” in John McCain World.
Jonathan Chait added today, “McCain takes a strong interest in foreign policy, to be sure, but his main public appeal has been to endless remind voters of his history as a POW. On economics, he’s repeatedly admitted that he knows very little. And on social issues, he doesn’t even know what his own positions are. (See this hilarious report from last year.)”
If this campaign boils down to which side is prepared to offer policy specifics, McCain will be lucky to even carry Arizona.
On the broader point, it is interesting that McCain seems to be focusing most of his attention on Obama, not Hillary Clinton. Nico Pitney pulled together some of the examples, including the one referenced above. There was also his speech after his primary victories last night.
“Hope, my friends, is a powerful thing. I can attest to that better than many, for I have seen men’s hopes tested in hard and cruel ways that few will ever experience. And I stood astonished at the resilience of their hope in the darkest of hours because it did not reside in an exaggerated belief in their individual strength, but in the support of their comrades, and their faith in their country. My hope for our country resides in my faith in the American character, the character which proudly defends the right to think and do for ourselves, but perceives self-interest in accord with a kinship of ideals, which, when called upon, Americans will defend with their very lives.
“To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude.”
This isn’t entirely encouraging for Hillary Clinton, who probably wishes McCain were attacking her, too.