Being John McCain

Matt Steinglass:

Sullivan writes “McCain knew full well that Palin was unqualified to be commander-in-chief.” But here’s the thing: John McCain is unqualified to be Commander-in-Chief.

Back in January 2008 I attended a “practice caucus,” hosted for fun by the fine folks at Drinking Liberally. It was held a few days after Obama won in Iowa, and a few days before Hillary won in New Hampshire, so all the Democratic candidates were still in the running — and, unlike the real caucuses later that year, the atmosphere was cozy enough that the thirty or forty attendees could genuinely talk to each other about the merits of each candidate.

So we all pretended to caucus, declared for our candidates, and then made the rounds from one group to the next, trying to peel off an Edwards supporter here, or a Kucinich fan there, so that the numbers rounded up to give Obama one more delegate. I remember making the pitch for Obama and arguing that any of the Democratic Party’s top candidates would go on to win the 2008 election: Hillary could beat Guiliani, Dodd could beat Thompson, and so on for every combination on the list.1

But one of my arguments for Barack Obama was that he would most likely draw John McCain as his opponent — and that Obama was especially well positioned to bring out John McCain’s worst qualities. 2 And he did: McCain’s legendary temper, his age, his erratic and impulsive decisions, and his visceral, personal hatred of Obama were all on display throughout the 2008 campaign.

Admittedly McCain might have self-destructed no matter who he was running against, and his choice of Sarah Palin was only one of several Hail-Mary efforts to shake up a race he was clearly losing — but it was Palin who clearly revealed how reckless and unprepared John McCain really was. As disastrous as George W. Bush was for America, McCain would have been far worse: By now we’d be in a second Great Depression and a shooting war with Iran, just for starters.

1. In hindsight, John Edwards was the one Democratic candidate who could have blown the 2008 election and handed the White House to John McCain… which, among other reasons, is why Edwards will never, ever be forgiven or rehabilitated. [↩]
2. In fact I argued the GOP’s entire playbook would fail against Obama: Since 1988 the GOP has relied on what Josh Marshall calls the bitch-slap theory of electoral politics to belittle and marginalize their opponents — and Obama had repeatedly demonstrated that he could turn such attacks against the attackers, by either appealing to the public’s desire to change the tone of our politics, or by calling out the opponent and deftly mocking them. [↩]