McCain's big strategic error - going to the right instead of the center

Assuming nothing major changes from now until election day (a big assumption to be sure), John McCain will lose the 2008 Presidential election to Barack Obama.

And although the fundamentals have always been strongly in Obama's favor (unpopular war, bad economy, general evilness of Bush/Republicans), McCain's impending loss was not inevitable. It springs from a fundamental strategic decision he made once he won the nomination.

McCain decided that he would run as a conservative, but try and keep the "maverick" label. The thinking behind this is/was that he needed the Bush base, but had enough political capital from his "maverick" days of 1999-2004 to make the American people believe that he'd be real change.

This was wrong/stupid for many reasons:

1. You run a base election when your base is bigger than the other guy's. This is how Bush ran in 2004 obviously, and while you usually try to do what worked last time, it has been painfully obvious this year that things have fundamentally changed since the last election. Democrats are far more energized and have picked up independents.

2. McCain overestimated how much the public remembered him. Sure they had vague memories of "maverick" McCain, but these weren't so embedded that they couldn't get different views of him given the opportunity. And, by running to the right, Obama has had a relatively easy time of trying him to Bush.

3. This year, he chose "maverick" issues that people either didn't care about or didn't like. Nobody really cares about pork-barrel spending when push comes to shove. Sure they don't like it, but people who will vote on it will already vote for Republicans. And even though people are happy the Surge has tamped down violence in Iraq, McCain's stand on it reminds them of his general hawkishness. Compare that to 2000 when he chose campaign finance reform and corporate greed as his issues, things that had real resonance to independents. This brings us the last and most important reason McCain's strategy didn't work...

4. People only buy that you're a "maverick" if you get shit from your own party. Just as people never really bought Obama as an independent Democrat, they only bought McCain's "maverick" image in 2000 because he pissed off a lot of conservatives & the GOP establishment. So when he went out of his way this year to brand himself as a conservative he seriously damaged his "maverick" brand.

So what should McCain have done instead? Here are a few big things that could have changed the tenor of the race:

1. Go hard to the center after winning the nomination. I was dumbfounded when McCain, after he wrapped up the nomination, starting going farther to the right. There's a reason why its such a strong political rule that you always run to the center after you win your party's nomination. The strong idealogues may grumble, but its not like they're going to vote for the other guy. And again, if your base is smaller than the other person's you have more to gain by going for the middle than going for the edges.

2. Pick a fight with the Bush administration. There's certainly no love lost between McCain and Bush so its not like he owes the President anything. They could have even talked about it beforehand - what the hell does Bush care about his popularity anymore. When people ask McCain what he disagrees with the Bush Administration on, he only gives a lame answer like government spending. Sure McCain may hate pork much more than Bush, but its not like Bush is out there saying how awesome pork-barrel spending is (in fact, he says the opposite). Compare this to when McCain was for campaign finance reform, against the tax cuts, for global warming legislation - everyone knew they had a real, substantive difference.

3. Pick Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge instead of Sarah Palin. McCain's VP pick was probably the decision that best crystallized his big strategic error of going to the right instead of the center. He could have picked Lieberman or Ridge, both of whom would have signalled a strong swing to the center, both of whom would have underscored his (then) message of experience. Both Lieberman or Ridge would have been a risk, but at that point they were the only picks that could really attract the center (especially Lieberman). They were high risk, high reward. Palin on the other hand with high risk, relatively low reward. As Mike Murphy, the smartest political thinker around (and close McCain confidant) has said repeatedly, Palin was a base pick, and McCain needed to move past his base. So even if Palin hadn't bombed her interviews and become a laughingstock, it would not have been enough to win in a year like this.

So McCain made a fundamental strategic mistake to run to the right as opposed to the center. That's the root cause of all the other problems in his campaign. He's now focusing on short-term political tactics because their strategy is wrong. He's attacking Obama and sounding angry because he doesn't have a great message for himself. He's doing a political hail-mary a week because he doesn't have any other shot to win. He's attacking the media because he's lost their trust.

So this was a bad political choice, and it was a bad moral choice since he basically chose cynicism over real reform which McCain had traditionally championed. In my mind the hard part for McCain was winning the nomination - I never thought he'd screw it up this badly after he got it.