http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110006757The McCain Myth
The moderation that makes him a Senate powerhouse will keep him out of the White House.
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Having helped broker the Great Senate Compromise last week, Sen. John McCain is back in the media limelight, winning the usual accolades for bucking his party. But the deal by 14 "moderates" doesn't just preserve the judicial filibuster and allow confirmation of a few of President Bush's "extremist" nominees. It also reveals that the myth the McCainiacs hoped would propel their man into the Oval Office in 2000 still endures, despite evidence of successive elections to the contrary.
The myth is simply that the only way to win elections is to draw voters from the other party by bucking a few of your own party's principles. Call it "maverick moderatism," but this belief has been the foundation for Mr. McCain's strategy for achieving national office and has given us great ideas like the recent iteration of campaign finance reform, opposition to some tax cuts and dogged attacks by Mr. McCain on some military expenditures. It's also the foundation of many pundits' advice to the president that he pick more "moderate" judges, give up on using payroll taxes to create private Social Security accounts, and trim his sails on fighting terrorism by spreading freedom.
It's not clear how far Mr. McCain would have gotten without his honorable military record and compelling POW story. But in 2000 this myth was at least plausible. Republicans had just lost two presidential elections, even though President Clinton never topped 50% of the popular vote. Meanwhile the party has long been split on the question of whether it needed to nominate moderates from the "establishment" wing of the party if it was going to win. In 1976 the establishment candidate and sitting president, Gerald Ford, narrowly won the nomination, but lost the general election. In 1980 the "Reagan revolution" swept the Gipper into office and empowered conservatives.
But even Reagan's victory didn't settle the issue. The 40th president appointed plenty of true-blooded conservatives to his administration. But there were plenty of moderates on hand too, for the very practical reason that they had the experience and know how to work the levers of government. The most senior among the "establishment" Republicans was Vice President George Bush, who, while campaigning for the presidential nomination in 1980, had coined the phrase "voodoo economics" to describe Reagan's insight that lower taxes would spur growth.
Now, however, the answer to the question is obvious: Conservatives can and do win elections for the Republican Party. What the McCain Myth ignores is that for now a majority of voters nationwide embrace conservative principles. Talk of being a "compassionate conservative" notwithstanding, it wasn't maverick moderatism that handed President Bush victories in 2000 and 2004. Nor has the McCain Myth been responsible for padding Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Indeed, Republicans have been winning by sticking to their principles and not bucking their party's ideas on tax cuts, national defense or reforming the judiciary.
What's changed since 2000 is that it's become clear that the conservatives have become the Republican establishment by being able to claim credit for almost every ballot-box victory since 1980--including that of Vice President Bush, who in 1988 had the support of the conservative wing, which hoped--futilely, it turned out--that he would continue the Reagan revolution. After Mr. Bush's 1992 defeat, conservatives took over Congress in 1994, and a moderate Republican lost the presidential race in 1996. No one represents the changing of the guard better than George W. Bush himself, who is now pushing revolutionary conservative ideas in every arena from defense to Social Security to tax reform.
Having come this far, what Mr. McCain and the other Republican Senate "moderates" in last week's compromise would have the party do is give up on the very principles that is winning elections. All in the name of appealing to the "middle" of the electorate that is already voting for the party.
This is really a lesson better served up to Democrats, who have been losing elections despite record turnouts among base voters. The Democratic Leadership Council, a moderate group that helped elected Bill Clinton in 1992 as a "new Democrat," is doing just that. In the current issue of the group's bimonthly magazine, Blueprint, former McCain aide Marshall Wittmann, now a senior fellow at the DLC, urges Democrats to use the Arizona senator as model in bucking the party's principles. He's surely right that the party would be well served by putting the nation's interests ahead of the party's ideology. Other articles in the issue spell out a few specific areas in which Democrats who bucked party orthodoxy would likely be rewarded for it: national defense, religious faith in politics, even Social Security reform.
The most interesting advice the DLC is doling out these days has to do with suburban voters. President Bush beat John Kerry in 97 of the 100 fastest growing communities in the country. The Democrats can win urban areas with record turnout but still lose elections. Joel Kotkin notes that Minnesota, traditionally a progressive state that gave us such liberal icons as Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Sen. Paul Wellstone, may now be turning Republican. It was the only state Ronald Reagan lost in 1984, but Democrats can no longer count on carrying the state. John Kerry had 60% of the vote in the Twin Cities last year, but the suburbs went to President Bush by a similar margin. "Two decades ago, these results might not have been so disturbing. But now the suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul are three times as populous as the Twin Cities themselves," he writes. The problem is Democrats have for too long denigrated suburban dwellers and even fought new suburbs from going up with "smart growth" restrictions, so suburbanites return the favor by voting Republican.
As for Mr. McCain, this all leaves him in the unenviable position of offering a political philosophy--no more tax cuts, moderate reforms to entitlement programs and, among other things, moderate judges--that is actually costing Democrats votes. Paradoxically it's a political philosophy that helps him wield tremendous power in the Senate, where there are plenty of mushy moderates. But the idea that it's a political philosophy that will propel Republicans into the White House is a myth that this President Bush has long since dispelled.
