Is there anything to say about the debate? Is there anything left to say about… the election?

(A question discussed in this thread is: in what sense does McCain want to win / want to lose?)

I think we have to get used to the idea that John Fitzgerald Obama is overwhelmingly likely to be the next president. The other John at the debate tonight was not pathetic all the way through, but at key moments—on the issue of negative attacks, on the issue of Ayers—he was pathetic. It’s not even worth talking about.

Though it’s been said before, isn’t it remarkable that McCain had such a vicious killer instinct against the conservative standard bearer Romney, and no real instinct to fight Obama at all? And if McCain enjoyed almost supernatural luck in coming back from political death in 2007, doesn’t it now seem to be the case that McCain’s luck was not for McCain’s sake, but for Obama’s—to present to Obama an opponent who wouldn’t fight him?

However, now that I think about it further, McCain also got what he wanted: to defeat the conservative Republicans and to hand the country over to leftist Democrats. So McCain and Obama are both very lucky guys.

* * *

Update: I’m not saying that McCain consciously wants to lose the election and that everything he has done so far has been directed at that. On one level, of course he wants to win. He’s striving, he’s trying, he picks an unconventional running mate who he thinks will spark his campaign, he comes up with positions on the financial crisis, he prepares for the debates, he works at improving his dreadful speaking style, he authorizes tough ads on Obama, and so on. But on a deeper level, he doesn’t really want to win. He doesn’t see Obama as someone who represents something really different from himself and from America as we’ve known it and who must be stopped. He has no real grasp of the meaning of Obama’s associations with Wright and Ayers, how objectionable those associations are—that’s why, last April, he prohibited criticism of Wright, and why, last night, he pathetically dropped the ball on Ayers. Thus, while he would like to defeat Obama, he doesn’t feel that he must defeat him. He wants to do a good job as a candidate and to acquit himself well, but it will not bother him very much if he loses, because his ultimate frame of reference is his loyalty to the liberalism which requires that Obama win.

To put it in the simplest terms, he wanted to beat Romney far more than he wants to beat Obama.

—end of initial entry—

Robert B. writes:

Two liberals duking it out—each one trying to prove he is not a full blown leftist.

Peter G. writes:

Watching the debate from a non-citizen and essentially a non-political perspective, it appears as though you will soon have your first biracial leader. It’s ironic that a guy in his seventies would come across as such a lightweight personality. The apostle James was inspired to describe a man who lacked faith in The Way, being indecisive about his beliefs. You have to wonder Larry how an old guy can come across as being so vapid and diaphanous about his values that he would come across like such an old nut bar. It’s as though his intellectual development, which was formed in a desiccated form of traditional values seemed to aggravate his liberal sensibilities and precipitated the predictable and visible dissonant affectation. To restate your prior observation, he’s just came across as plain nutty.

The worst of all scenarios has befallen your people.

LA replies:

I don’t remember saying that McCain comes across as nutty, but I may have at some point.

October 16

Jonathan W. writes:

Not that I’m a fan of McCain, but I’m really having a hard time understanding why all the analysts (including it seems most of the VFR readers who have commented) think Obama won last night. I don’t see how McCain did a bad job articulating his positions (of course, many of his positions are directly contrary to conservative principles).

LA replies:

Commentators elsewhere in the conservative Web felt that McCain did a good job and even won, though they added that his winning this debate is not enough to turn the campaign around. I was responding to McCain’s utter failure to respond adequately on a couple of key points that I was particularly attuned to and the impression of utter weakness that that presented, plus the contrast (which was noticeable on CSPAN with its split screen coverage, not on PBS which showed a variety of camera angles) between McCain’s distracted, jittery, constantly inappropriately smiling demeanor, versus Obama’s cool and collected demeanor. (I believe that he has been studying footage of John F. Kennedy and was imitating him, though subtly.) I should have made it clear that my view was not based on a point by point consideration of the whole debate but was an intuitive impression that hit me for the first time: McCain’s a loser, Obama is going to be the president.

Jonathan W. replies:

Ahh, I see. Thanks. Yeah I agree that Obama is a far better orator and is more smooth and eloquent in his delivery. You are right in that McCain has utterly refused to draw attention to Obama’s lies about the tax cuts for 95 percent of America, as those cuts are nothing more than welfare checks for almost half of the people who will receive them. Obama also hasn’t mentioned how the health care plan (where anyone will be able to buy the federal health insurance plan) is feasible, as the government provided coverage plans are notoriously expensive. McCain said nothing on this point. Lastly, McCain lost a great opportunity to attack Obama’s statement that judges exist to provide “fairness and justice” and that they should step in when “no one else will.” He could have brought up how judges in that form release violent criminals on obscure technicalities, allow the seizure of private property for private gain, and eviscerate explicit 2nd Amendment rights while creating “penumbras” out of thin air. Of course, McCain, being a liberal who intends to nominate people like David Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor, probably sees nothing wrong with these positions.

In any event, I’m still not convinced though that Obama has this election wrapped up. I don’t doubt that the Bradley Effect will be less significant now than it was in the early 1980s, I do think it could have a substantial effect on the election. I wonder whether the 527 groups are going to start advertising Obama’s connections to the unsavory characters he has surrounded himself with his whole life.

LA replies:

“… McCain, being a liberal who intends to nominate people like David Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor…”

I think you’ve just come up with the answer anti-McCain conservatives can use when challenged on the need to stop Obama because of the liberal federal judges he will appoint.

October 16

James N. writes

I do believe McCain wants to win. I believe he thinks he’d be a better President than Obama, that Obama’s policies wouldn’t work. I also think he thinks of himself as a conservative.

But what he IS, what’s the highest value in his political hierarchy of values, is anti-right. If winning requires mobilizing the right, especially if that mobilization involves affirming the people’s righteous anger at the left, then I think he’s OK with losing.

We’ve seen this over and over again, in curious places. Certainly Bush, after 9/11, raced to prevent anti-Muslim violence (for which there was no evidence). He was MORE AFRAID of the anger of our people than he was of the enemy. In Europe, even (relatively) conservative politicians are more afraid of Vlaams Belang and the BNP (and say so) then they are of the fall of their civilization.

Bush and Rove were very clever in their manipulation of symbols for the 2004 election, and they were able to turn out enough right-wing folk, mostly evangelical Christians, to win without actually promising them anything or doing anything for them.

But where Bush was and is indifferent to the American right, McCain despises them. He won’t even tolerate them sufficiently to get his sorry a** into the White House.

This is an enlargement and further development of the “anti-anti-Communism” so prevalent all during the cold war.

The Democratic nominees have “no enemies on the left.” The Republican nominees, with the partial exception of Ronald Reagan, DO have enemies on the right, and they feel virtuous to make it known.

For the center-right coalition to prevail, the right has to participate. One of the major motives that propel right-wing voters to the polls is their loathing of every single thing that Obama (or Kerry, or Gore, or Dukakis, or Mondale, or Carter) represent.

McCain won’t push that button. He’d rather lose. So he will.

I won’t point out that my boy Rudy Giuliani was and is a virtuoso at pushing that particular button. He would have kicked Obama’s a** into next week. Too bad, so sad.

LA replies:

Interesting. I never heard anyone point to such a difference between McCain and Giuliani.

I think our angle on this is the same. McCain wants to win, so long as it doesn’t involve any dishonor. And for McCain dishonor means taking the side of conservatives against liberals. So, while on one level of his mind he wants to win, on another level of his mind he would prefer to lose.

October 17

Peggy Noonan has a very different take on the debate:

John McCain won the debate, and he did it by making the case more effectively than he has in the past that Barack Obama will raise taxes, when “now, of all times in America, we need to cut people’s taxes.” He also scored Mr. Obama on his eloquence, using it against him more effectively than Hillary Clinton ever did. When she said he was “just words,” it sounded like a bitter complaint. Mr. McCain made it a change: Young man, you attempt to obscure truth with the mellifluous power of your words. From Mrs. Clinton it sounded jealous, but when Mr. McCain said it, you looked at Mr. Obama and wondered if you’d just heard something that was true. For the first time, Mr. Obama’s unruffled demeanor didn’t really work for him. His cool made him seem hidden.

James N. writes:

“Interesting. I never heard anyone point to such a difference between McCain and Giuliani.”

Not to plow that old ground again, but I think you overlooked the RAGE that Rudy G. provoked in the race-resentment, white leftist coalition in NYC. He was on to them, they knew it, and they knew he could explain it to the people in a way they could comprehend, and act on.

His press conferences where he slapped Sharpton and Siegel (NYCLU) around were masterworks. He’s one politician, maybe the only Republican one, who was supremely indifferent to the good opinion of the media-academic-welfare class iron triangle.

“And for McCain dishonor means taking the side of conservatives against liberals. So, while on one level of his mind he wants to win, on another level of his mind he would prefer to lose.”

Not exactly. McCain thinks of himself as a conservative. Many Republicans think of themselves that way, too.

What McCain thinks is dishonorable is association with the Right, which he and almost everyone else considers to be different from “conservatives”. The “conservatives” in the GOP were happy to have the votes of the Right, as long as they didn’t have to ask for them and could disparage them behind their backs, while rubbing shoulders with Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, and Bill Kristol.

The Right has grown in strength and self-awareness, however, and now wants the same respect the Left gets from the Democrats. I’m afraid that the organized GOP fears the Right more than they fear the Democrats, though, and they won’t grant the Right even minimal respect. This is, of course, a formula for disaster.

Rudy G. was a liberal in many ways. But he never spat on the Right, he never turned his back on them (unless you count l’affaire Hanover), and he spoke many of their concerns in a loud, clear voice. His dissection of Obama at the convention was masterful. Imagine if America had heard THAT every day for the past two months.

In this election cycle, I never understood those rightists who thought that a rightist candidate who would make war on the middle could prevail. Tancredo and Hunter were always fantasy candidates. Romney isn’t a man of the right, and his atmospherics play to Obama’s strong suit. McCain could have won (and I suppose, in spite of himself, he still could), but his anti-Right bigotry will likely do him in.

Where we go from here, I have no idea.

LA replies:

It’s true that Giuliani gave a strong attack speech at the convention. But you seem to have forgotten the fact that Giuliani, long considered the Inevitable Nominee, ended up winning one (ONE) delegate. He was completely unacceptable to the Republican party, for good reasons. Further, even if those reasons had not obtained, he was no longer the fighter he had been but had become a vulgar, ego-swollen celebrity. People who put their hopes on Giuliani were not looking at reality. They wasted all that time, energy, and attention on him when they could have been looking for, cultivating, and helping an acceptable candidate who could win. For years I wrote to conservative opinion makers when they touted Giuliani for the nomination and said that given his abortion and lifestyle stands and his personal history this was absurd, he would never be nominated. I was right. They were wrong.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 15, 2008 10:54 PM | Send