Sen. McCain & Lady Fortune
March 16th, 2008 at 12:14pm Geoff
Pollster Scott Rasmussen posits and addresses the question of whether Sen. McCain’s heretofore success in the presidential campaign has been based on luck and good fortune. Whether you believe that it has been or has not, this is a worthy question to consider.
In answering it myself, I would like to at first be clear that, more than anything else, Sen. McCain’s nomination victory is due to his strengths as a candidate and his tenacity and perseverance on the trail. With that said, it seems irrefutable that he has indeed been the beneficiary of a significant degree of good fortune, as I think any successful politician must be to some extent or another.
Take Iraq. Sen. McCain “owned” the surge and staked his candidacy on American success there at a time when nearly everyone else—Democrat and Republican alike—was creating all manner of distance and distinction between themselves and our involvement there. Yet in the nearly fourteen months that the surge has been implemented and executed it has become an obvious success, and though much of the credit for this belongs to Sen. McCain and his statesmanship and political courage in advocacy and defense of it, the tide of events in Iraq is and always has been outside of the control of one individual. Had it not been for the American resurgence there, I doubt we would have seen the simultaneous resurgence of Sen. McCain.
The fractured Republican field also served to Sen. McCain’s advantage. The portion of the conservative base which stood in opposition to him never coalesced around an alternative. In consequence, he was left an opening through which he was able to surge and capture the nomination in an ultimately quick and convincing manner.
In this same vain, Mayor Giuliani absolutely vanished from the campaign once it began to intensify in the month or so prior to Iowa and New Hampshire, leaving no one to credibly challenge Sen. McCain for the national security and moderate Republican/Independent primary vote, such as there was.
Each of these developments, for the most part out of his control, amounted to a perfect storm of good fortune by which Sen. McCain leaped from the political graveyard to the Republican nomination in a span of three months.
His good fortune does not seem to have dissipated either. Senators Clinton and Obama are deadlocked in the race for their party’s nomination, and to create distance between each other they are criticizing the multitudinous flaws of both to a degree that Sen. McCain could only hope to match. Whether this fatally cripples the eventual nominee and erases the inherent advantages they would and should enjoy will be determined in November. But that fortune could sweep Sen. McCain not just to the nomination (for which he was the most qualified) but to the White House as well (for which he is the most qualified) is entirely conceivable.
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5 Comments
1. KMorrison | March 16th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
I disagree that his position on the surge is ‘luck related’, but the fractured Republican field absolutely broke his way in a big and lucky way. First, as a New Hampshirite, I don’t think I’ll ever understand why Mayor Giuliani gave up on the state. Senator McCain doesn’t win NH he was likely done. Second, if Thompson and Huckabee were not both in the race in SC, it’s unlikely McCain wins that state either. Finally, talk radio waited until about a week before FL to take a stand. It came off as being anti-McCain, much more than it came off as pro-Romney, and they essentially shot themselves in the foot by starting off fickle, then having a meltdown. Senator McCain’s tenacity kept him in the race, but luck certainly played a role too.
2. Geoff | March 16th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I don’t think his position on Iraq was ‘luck related’, and that is not what I meant to convey. As I said in the piece, where this country is in Iraq today is largely because Sen. McCain was one of the few politicians willing to take a courageous stand and convince his colleagues in the Senate–jittery Republicans specifically–to give the surge a chance. You would surely agree however, that the tide of events in Iraq since has been out of Sen. McCain’s and any other individual’s personal control, and had America not turned the tide there Sen. McCain would have never resurrected his own candidacy.
3. Sarah | March 16th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
John McCain best embodies the conservative principles of the Republican Party.
4. KMorrison | March 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I agree that even though I think Senator McCain deserves a huge amount of credit for backing the surge, it certainly wasn’t all his doing, or even mainly his doing, and the way it played out was definitely not guaranteed or within his control. I just see his support of the surge as a risky yet principled stand as opposed to the blind luck he had with Thompson staying in the race through SC then dropping out right afterwards, or Giuliani giving up on NH.
5. Geoff | March 17th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
I agree with that. It was a principled, unpopular stand that was awarded by good fortune.