Michael Smerconish: McCain: The first obituary
MEMO -
To: John McCain
From: Campaign director Steve Schmidt
Date: Nov. 5
You fought the good fight. You lost because of a failed campaign strategy, not because of what you as an individual offered the nation.
Last night's polling suggests this election wasn't about the GOP base. It was about the middle of the spectrum, not its fringes. Karl Rove's advice to drive our base by indirectly fueling the urban legends about Barack Obama's background with our own questions about his associations and fitness to lead appears to have backfired. We should never have run that ad with the tagline "Too Risky for America."
The exit polling suggests that our core regarded this election as a referendum on Obama. In other words, their votes were never in doubt.
Maybe we never had to placate the John Hagees or include language in the platform that opposed abortion even when the mother is raped because we would have gotten those votes anyway. We should have run like you did in 2000 - as a social moderate unafraid to call Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance" and unwilling to make a ban on gay marriage an issue.
It was terrific when you interrupted the Minnesota woman when she said she thought Obama was Arab. Trouble is, she began by saying, "I can't trust Obama," a notion she pulled right out of our media campaign. There were also those individuals who warmed up crowds by using Obama's middle name, and the Virginia GOP chairman who said bin Laden and Obama "both have friends that bombed the Pentagon."
Voters realized that the campaign couldn't control the knuckleheads who gravitated to our effort, but they concluded that we fostered an atmosphere that made these people think their behavior was appropriate. We should have acted sooner to rein in those supporters. Similarly, the William Ayers issue worked our base into a lather, as planned, but our bombardment of that charge at a time when the economy was imploding repelled those who were still trying to make up their minds.
Perhaps no one event epitomizes our misstep like our VP selection. At the Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin delivered a stem-winder that energized the base, but over time distanced us from moderates and independents whose support should have been our target.
Frankly, you were ill-served by those of us who talked you out of taking Sen. Lieberman or Gov. Ridge. We should've recognized their pro-choice views were an asset, not a liability.
There were a number of
missed opportunities. We could have reached those all-important moderate voters had you not said the fundamentals of the economy were strong, and instead offered a plan for recovery that showed your command of the situation.
Maybe we should've conceded Obama's point that the front line in the war on terror is the Af-
ghan-Pakistan border. Undoubtedly, we should've offered a serious plan for energy independence instead of an adage about drilling.
Take Pennsylvania, a microcosm of what went wrong nationwide, as an example.
Obama got an unprecedented level of minority support and beat us among Hispanics, 2-1.
That was no surprise. It does make me wish we'd talked more about border security instead of deluding ourselves into believing we'd get some Hispanic votes by remaining silent.
But it's no surprise we lost Philadelphia by a huge margin. You ran well in Northeast and South Philadelphia, but we lost the rest.
We always knew we'd lose the city, but anticipated making up those votes among conservative whites. And while we did indeed win central Pennsylvania and the state's northern tier, our projected margins didn't anticipate the results in the southeast and southwest parts of the state.
In those areas, socially moderate suburbanites concerned about the economy and about ridding the world of terrorists went overwhelmingly for Obama. They are the votes that are always in play, the Republicans and Democrats who vote for candidates in both parties. They elect Arlen Specter to the Senate and Ed Rendell to the statehouse. Rick Santorum was too conservative for them. Suburbanites like these were ultimately our margin of defeat. You are a patriot. Your place in American history was secure long before this race.
I regret that there will be debate over what the result would've been had you run as a maverick with moderate tendencies. *
Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.