Did Palin destroy McCain's chances of winning in 2008?
Christian
2012/08/16 10:39:41
As former President George W. Bush gets set to make the media rounds
to promote his memoir, he is being peppered with questions about 2012
and Sarah Palin, but Bush is no Palin fan. In fact, he blames the choice
of Palin for losing the 2008 election. According to the New York Daily
News, Bush thinks that McCain, “destroyed any chance of winning by
picking Palin.”
According to a story in the New York Daily News,
George W. Bush is no fan of Sarah Palin. According to a source, “He
thinks McCain ran a lousy campaign with an unqualified running mate and
destroyed any chance of winning by picking Palin.” Even worse, Bush
questioned McCain manhood because he picked Palin, “Naming Palin makes
Bush think less of McCain as a man.”
That said, I do think that any hope he ever had of winning, died the moment he named her as his VP candidate.
Thing is that by 2008 moderate America was suffering from Bush fatigue. What cache he had after 9/11 and his subsequent actions was lost in his second term by letting Iraq and Afghanistan go on and on and devolve into seemingly unwinnable situations. This let rhetoric on the issue explode and America just wanted rid of Bush and by extension his party.
The second half of the problem is that during that 2008 summer the economy imploded and that changed the top issue from terrorism and the wars to domestic issues and the economy. McCain was clearly geared to campaign as the foreign policy reformer, someone who would correct the Bush mistakes but still keep us safe. That platform would attempt to distance himself from Bush. When the top issue changed, McCain was all thumbs. His attempts to gain a foothold on the issue were clumsy. Regardless of who he picked as VP I don't think he was ever going to be able to push a solid economic policy that would win people over.
So, general Bush fatigue and economic downturn did him in.
Palin was purely icing on the cake. Bringing her on seemed to push the McCain team to run a more Bushlike campaign, which in the face of Bush fatigue didn't help. But as I pointed out he was already going ...
Thing is that by 2008 moderate America was suffering from Bush fatigue. What cache he had after 9/11 and his subsequent actions was lost in his second term by letting Iraq and Afghanistan go on and on and devolve into seemingly unwinnable situations. This let rhetoric on the issue explode and America just wanted rid of Bush and by extension his party.
The second half of the problem is that during that 2008 summer the economy imploded and that changed the top issue from terrorism and the wars to domestic issues and the economy. McCain was clearly geared to campaign as the foreign policy reformer, someone who would correct the Bush mistakes but still keep us safe. That platform would attempt to distance himself from Bush. When the top issue changed, McCain was all thumbs. His attempts to gain a foothold on the issue were clumsy. Regardless of who he picked as VP I don't think he was ever going to be able to push a solid economic policy that would win people over.
So, general Bush fatigue and economic downturn did him in.
Palin was purely icing on the cake. Bringing her on seemed to push the McCain team to run a more Bushlike campaign, which in the face of Bush fatigue didn't help. But as I pointed out he was already going to have a problem with that issue since his distinguishing feature from Bush, reformation of foreign policy, became back burner. Palin just helped ice him as "Bush II". Beyond that clearly she wasn't going to add anything from an economic policy standpoint, but McCain was already failing on that front.
The details about her being unready for office, while entertainingly highlighted, were really second to the core problems.
Had McCain gone with another pick I don't know how much better he would have fared. If he had picked Romney as an economic VP that may have helped some but not enough to turn the tide since McCain himself couldn't get a policy together. He wanted Lieberman which I think could have made pretty good inroads in the moderate vote as a bi-partisan team that would successfully kill off the Bush fatigue factor and I think would have mitigated some of the economic concerns as moderates would get comfortable at the potential for real helpful policies put together in a bipartisan fashion. But it would have just killed the base - the base that was disappointed by Bush and tired by trying to defend some of his actions for years. Seeing the GOP nominee pick a Democrat would have certainly kept them at home. Meanwhile Obama got out as much base support as anyone could hope for. And even with a bi partisan ticket Obama still had the simpler, sexier message of "Change" and thus still would have got a good portion of moderates anyway.
Palin didn't help, but McCain was already doomed.