PhillyTablet Inquirer Daily News
Mobile
Home Delivery
philly.com
email
font size
options
 
Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The check and balance candidate



Am I a seer, or what?

In a newspaper column 18 weeks ago, I wrote that John McCain should offer himself to the voters as the guy who would check and balance the Democratic Congress. Since it was clear that the Democrats would control both chambers in 2009, who better to tame their most liberal impulses than a Republican president? As I contended on June 8, McCain should “preach the virtues of divided government….Independent swing voters, who are wary of one-party rule, and who tend to like McCain anyway, might warm to that pitch. McCain needs to run against the Democratic Congress…and suggest that Obama, with his liberal Senate voting record, would conspire with lawmakers to provide ‘the wrong kind of change.’”

And sure enough, this very week, McCain and his surrogates are making this pitch.

I have no intention of billing the McCain campaign for my unsolicited advice; clearly, his message mavens were able to see the wisdom of the “divided government” argument all by themselves. In the end it may not be a winning argument, but unlike the Ayres and ACORN sideshows, at least it isn’t nonsensical. Quite the contrary, it is politically credible; as long evidenced by their voting behavior, Americans like divided government.

McCain, in his retooled stump speech yesterday, offered himself as a bulwark against one-party rule by conjuring this alleged nightmare scenario: “Senator Obama is measuring the drapes and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq.”

And his surrogates were in sync on the Sunday talk shows. Campaign manager Rick Davis told Fox News, “Do we really believe that the American public is going to feel safe by having the head of Congress and the head of the White House from the same party…?” He was soon seconded by Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty: “I don’t think the country is going to like the Democratic party running the table on taxes, on education, on health care, and have the kind of liberal, unchecked, imbalanced approach to all those issues. It’s going to be bad for the country. I think having John McCain as president to balance that out and be able to work across the aisle…would be a good compromise, a good balance.”

Friendly commentators have picked up the theme. At the Weekly Standard magazine, Fred Barnes (who is typically a conduit for Karl Rove’s sentiments), writes today that, without McCain in the White House as a check and balance, “there’d be nothing stopping President Obama from doing what he wanted in a liberal-dominated Washington.”

Republican Senate and House candidates probably won’t appreciate being thrown under the bus in this  manner – after all, McCain is conceding that his party comrades are toast, and hoping to parlay that obituary into a political asset – but at this point the Republican standard-bearer doesn’t have a whole lot of other options.

With each tick of the clock, his playing field continues to shrink. The election is just three weeks away, yet McCain is being forced to spend precious time defending North Carolina, a newly-competitive state that hasn’t backed a Democratic nominee in 32 years; defending Indiana, a state that hasn’t backed a Democrat in 44 years; defending Colorado, which has voted Republican in nine of the last 10 presidential elections; and perhaps even defending North Dakota, where the latest poll puts Barack Obama up by two percentage points. Yeah, North Dakota.

The “check and balance” argument is being pitched to swing voters – many of whom historically, have embraced the concept. Voting experts have told me for years that people generally don’t go into the booth consciously intending to check and balance, but the results are irrefutable. Roughly two-thirds of the elections since the World War II era have either produced or sustained divided government.

Most contemporary Americans don’t have fond memories of one-party rule; Bill Clinton and the congressional Democrats held all the power in 1993 and 1994, and the voters ended that arrangement by elevating Newt Gingrich and his vanguard conservatives. Two years later, in 1996, House Republicans retained their majority in part by convincing voters that Clinton needed to be checked and balanced during his second term. And we all remember what happened in the 2006 elections, when the voters nixed the GOP’s one-party rule by erasing President Bush’s majorities in both chambers.

Even during the ‘80s, when Ronald Reagan’s popularity was at its peak, voters never gave him a Republican House; and in 1986, when Reagan asked the voters to protect his GOP-controlled Senate (“cast one last vote for the Gipper,” he pleaded), they responded by ousting Republican incumbents and handing the chamber to the Democrats.

The Obama camp is well aware of this traditional sentiment. How often has Obama asserted on the stump that he looks forward to working for the American people, in close cooperation with an expanded Democratic Congress? By my rough count, never.

But the question this autumn is whether the check-and-balance argument still resonates, given the uniquely awful economic circumstances. After all, the dark side of divided government is gridlock, and anxious Americans may not be in the mood for that.

As evidence, I’ll offer one anecdote (while conceding that one anecdote does not constitute a trend). While on the road last week, I fell into conversation with a well-heeled American businessman. He said, “I was really gung ho for McCain, and I intended all along to vote for him. But now I’ve gone all the way over to Obama. I look at this from a practical standpoint. If McCain manages to get in, by the skin of his teeth, he’s going to face a Democratic Congress that’s going to be seriously ticked at the way he won his race. The liberal base will be against him - and the conservative Republican base won’t like him, either, especially if he tries to reach across the aisle. Bottom line is that there would be all kinds of rancor, which means that nothing is going to get done in Washington for the next four years. At least if Obama wins, something will get done. I’m willing to give that a try.”

I doubt that this guy is alone in his assessment.

  
Posted by Dick Polman @ 11:10 AM  Permalink | 118 comments
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:25 AM, 10/14/2008
    He should have adopted this strategy long ago. It suits him better than the traditional RNC lines of attack. Shame that it's probably too late. He had the same problem that Clinton did. Inferior organization. Scattered message.
    — t_dmanns
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:34 AM, 10/14/2008
    There could be significant political shifts in upcoming years. The Depression and FDR caused the urban Northeast to switch from solidly Republican to Democratic, a change which now seems near-permanent. The current crisis could move some of the West and South into the Democratic column, a change that could also become long-lasting. The conservative movement could go down in history as the movement that destroyed the Republican party.
    — liberal
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:35 AM, 10/14/2008
    Another point against the check-and-balance idea, in addition to the powerlessness against a united front of legislators, is the fact that it would be seen to work only if the executive is competent. I think McCain has fatally damaged his candidacy with his panicky, hysterical showboating in this financicl crisis. People have seen how he would handle a crisis, and running around shrieking like a little girl isn't going to cut it.
    — yoda
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:37 AM, 10/14/2008
    The McCain campaign has been playing the "throw the spaghetti on the wall" theory soince Obama received the nomination. They wanted so badly to ryun against Hillary, but when they ended up running against someone who was actually going to campaign on the issues, they fell on their face, because they had no platform to present to the electorate. McCain's campiagn will be used for years to come as THE example of how NOT to run. Even the Dem's couldn't have screwed up this badly, and we had the weak Kerry campaign 4 years ago!! This was McCain's race to lose and lose he has!
    — Waiting4U
  • Comment removed.
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:42 AM, 10/14/2008
    Go ahead and count your chickens before they hatch. I offer this sobering reminder: In the Pa. Democratic Primary, Hillary crushed Obama by ratios of nearly 3 to 1 in some important Democratic strongholds. In Cambria County Clinton got 72% of the vote to Obama's 28%. In Lackawanna County — Clinton beat Obama 74%-26%. Go ahead and call the election early, you might be eating your words.
    — CD75
  • Comment removed.
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:45 AM, 10/14/2008
    I am not sure that trying to get the voters to worry about what the Dems will do if they get power works this year......the economy trumps everything!
    — robo
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:46 AM, 10/14/2008
    Obama is really a Marxist and his campaign is hiding that. The American public will get what it deserves if the polls continue to the voting both.
    — CD75
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:47 AM, 10/14/2008
    This would seem to be a strategy that only works on paper. With the exception of presidential elections, as "Tip" O'Neill said, "all politics is local".
    — vcsmith
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:49 AM, 10/14/2008
    The difference that Polman does not understand his that Reagan and Tip O'Neill respected each other. Today, all the dems do is call Repubs "scary". Name calling has replaced adversarial respect. Ms. Pelosi is probably the worst speaker this country has ever had. Tip O'Neill was a profesional. Pelosi is a joke and a baby.
    — CD75
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 12:19 PM, 10/14/2008
    Our current government has been "balanced" for the last 22 months and haven't got anything done. So why would more of the same thing be attractive to people who are on the fence? Personally, I think people are happier with government when they're actually passing bills rather than the gridlock and veto fun they're now having. Anyway, who cares? This column should read: Matt Stairs, Matt Stairs, Matt Stairs, Shane Victorino, Matt Stairs. That's all that matters in Philly today.
    — celtic_13
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 12:23 PM, 10/14/2008
    At this very moment, we live in a socialist country. Can we give the socialism nonsense a rest? We're already there. Temporary? That's utter garbage. There are still plenty of bank losses to be discovered. The government involvement in the market is only going to get more pervasive, not less so. And, as we already saw with Terri Schiavo and net neutrality, this government has no interest in staying out of the affairs of the populace. U.S.A., welcome to China's world. If other countries' history is any indicator, the government will be heavily involved in the market well past two terms from Obama or McCain.
    — psv
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 12:27 PM, 10/14/2008
    "Obama is really a Marxist" In that case, he's too late. Everything will be nationalized before the Inauguration.
    — SteveMG
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 12:39 PM, 10/14/2008
    This is so typical. Polman wrote many articles about Vitter, Foley, Craig, etc., but has yet to post anything about Tim Mahoney in Florida, the family values candidate who replaced Mark Foley. The MSM has also been relatively silent, on MSNBC saying they didn't not want to get into the details, but had no problem when a REPUBLICAN was involved in a sex scandal. Have you heard the audio tape of him firing and trying to intimidate his mistress? But NADA a word from anywhere in the MSM. Typical liberal one-sidedness.
    — tom - wilmington, de


118 comments | View All Comments | View All By Latest
View comments: 1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  | 
About Dick Polman

Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.

ARCHIVES

All commentaries posted before April 18, 2008, can be accessed at www.dickpolman.blogspot.com.

Advertise Here