Month: February 2008

by publius

McCain’s general election campaign is not off to a smooth start. First, his opening salvo focused on Obama’s commitment to public financing promises — whoops. Next, his campaign responded to the (grossly irresponsible) NYT article with an impulsive, overbroad “never helped any lobbyists ever” denial – thus opening himself to more unfavorable press.

These tactical misfires won’t sink his campaign by any means. They do, however, raise larger concerns. Simply put, McCain hasn’t proven himself to be a good campaigner yet. In fact, there are many reasons to think that he’ll actually campaign poorly.

I’m a big believer in the “primaries matter” theory. Elections are Darwinian environments – and candidates tend to win for a reason. Tactics matter, as does an ability to tap into the larger Zeitgeist (i.e., structural forces matter too, but good campaigners recognize and tap into those underlying currents). For this reason, candidates who look great on paper (Dole, Rudy, HRC) lose if they run wretched campaigns. Similarly, candidates who don’t look so hot on paper can compensate with superior campaigning skills. In short, people who win tend to run superior campaigns. Not always, but generally.

At first glance, you might think McCain’s primary victory is evidence of his own campaigning skills. But I don’t think so. His victory (for unique reasons) doesn’t necessarily show his Darwinian chops. Despite all his experience, McCain remains in many ways a roll of the dice.

Consider 2000. While he had some initial success due to fawning press coverage (which is probably his key “skill”), the ultimate result was a spectacular flameout in South Carolina and beyond. The South Carolina tactics were despicable, sure. But Republican primaries aren’t pretty. He knew the players involved and should have been better prepared. More to the point, you can’t win a Republican nomination when you ostentatiously demonize key coalition members, as he did. Personally, I applauded the criticism of Jerry Falwell, but I’d have been cringing if I were his campaign manager.

Moving on to 2008, the stars aligned perfectly for him. Ross Douthat has made the case more eloquently than I have, but McCain’s victory had a lot to do with luck. First, his rapid ascent helped him avoid embarrassing media moments. Remember that, for most of 2007, McCain was ignored. Thus, he wasn’t subject to the type of exacting scrutiny that Romney and Rudy (and, to a lesser extent, Fred Thompson got). He had to keep things together for a month rather than a year – a much easier task.

Second, his victory was less than overwhelming. McCain won a relatively small plurality among a sharply divided field. His victory had less to do with his savvy campaigning, and more to do with (1) a conservative base split between Romney and Huckabee; (2) Rudy’s rapid collapse and strategic blunders; and (3) Thompson’s silly last stand in South Carolina. None of this establishes that McCain is a bad campaigner. The point is that his victories don’t necessarily establish that he’s a good one.

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by publius

It’s hard to express how happy – nay, gleeful – I was to see the House recess without caving on FISA. The outburst of backbone literally brought tears of joy to my eyes. At last, I thought, Congressional Dems have exorcised the ghosts of 2002 and that most wretched of midterms – the winter of Dems’ discontent.

Looking back with some perspective, though, I think the 2002 election actually scarred Republicans far more than it did the Democrats. If there’s a party that needs to do some 2002 ghost-exorcisin’, it’s the GOP.

The story of how the 2002 election scarred the Dems is of course quite familiar. It’s not so much the thrashing itself, but the manner of the thrashing that scarred them. Remember that the GOP’s campaign strategy didn’t just beat them, it reduced them to shivering petrified little cowards who spoke of prescription drug benefits on the eve of war. (To this day, the image of Gephardt in the Rose Garden makes my blood boil – and isn’t that Edwards back there too?).

The abject humiliation is what traumatized the Congressional caucus – and that same fear resurfaces during the endgame of each national security debate. Nobody wants to risk that again.

At the same time this fiasco played out, the liberal base’s anger grew in direct proportion to its elected leaders’ cowardice (it even drove some to start blogging). This anger hasn’t really gone away – it’s been repressed, but it still lurks beneath. And that’s why the base pushes Congress so passionately when these issues come up. It’s 2002 all over again in their heads. Neither Congress nor the base wants another 2002 – it’s just that they have very different ideas about how to avoid it. (On an aside, this is more than a subtext of the opposition to Hillary Clinton – too many images of Gephardt float around her candidacy).

So that’s the Dem side of 2002 – but all that’s been said. What’s more interesting, then, is the negative effect of 2002 on the Republicans.

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by hilzoy

Herewith, the last installment of the More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About Clinton and Obama’s Legislative Records Project: the co-sponsored amendments from the 109th Congress. As before, I list only amendments that they are described as having co-sponsored as early as possible: in the Congressional Record if that’s available, on the first possible day when they could have co-sponsored if not. The point of this is to exclude as many bills as possible that they signed onto without working on them. However, the list that remains surely includes some bills that they did not work on.

As before, I also exclude amendments that are ceremonial (e.g., naming post offices, directing that coins be struck, etc.); bills that are of merely local interest (counting bills about NYC and 9/11 as being of more than local interest); bills that simply state policy or require a report; and bills that appropriate less than $50 million and do nothing else not covered in one of the earlier exclusions. The point of these exclusions is to remove bills that I think would be relatively easy to pass, since they require very little of Congress, and to prevent my having to type in the names of all those post offices.

Earlier bits of this: Sponsored bills and amendments, co-sponsored bills from the 110th and 109th Congresses here, and co-sponsored amendments from the 110th Congress here. The point, obviously, is to make it as easy as possible for anyone who wants to compare the candidates’ legislative records to do so.

Just in case anyone is wondering: no, I haven’t lost my mind. I had done a lot of this before, and today I was sick in exactly the sort of way that makes me think: I’m not good for much, so I might as well get a mind-numbingly boring task out of the way.

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by hilzoy

For all you policy junkies who were absolutely riveted by my last post, here’s more: a list of substantive bills of which Clinton and Obama were original co-sponsors in the 109th and 110th Congresses, and a list of substantive amendments of which they were original co-sponsors in the 110th. (The amendments in the 109th is what I haven’t finished yet.)

This list undoubtedly includes too much, since it’s possible to co-sponsor a bill you did not help write. I just don’t know how to narrow it down further. It’s probably a good idea to look at how many co-sponsors each bill has: in the case of S. 761, which has 69 co-sponsors, the fact that Clinton was among them is less likely to be significant than in the case of a bill for which she is the only co-sponsor. Where the Congressional Record helps, I note that fact.

Methodology: I list only bills/amendments that they are described as having sponsored as early as possible: in the Congressional Record if that’s available, on the first possible day when they could have co-sponsored if not. I exclude bills/amendments that are largely ceremonial (e.g., naming post offices, directing that coins be struck, etc.); bills that are of merely local interest (counting bills about NYC and 9/11 as being of more than local interest); bills that simply state policy or require a report; and bills that appropriate less than $50 million and do nothing else not covered in one of the earlier exclusions.

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