Letter To A Maverick

McCain can hope all the predictions are wrong, or that Joe Biden keeps saying crazy stuff I guess. Firstly though when I think about it all now though, I think he's done quite a few things right in terms of his campaign. The choice of Sarah Palin could be described as hilarious, odd, disgusting, etc...but also quite shrewd. If he had people (and he probably did) telling him that he needed to attract a certain demographic of people - conservative women, conservatives in general, the Christian Right and such - to his candidacy and to the polls on election day, then that's exactly the kind of person he needed. Whatever anyone's personal thoughts on Mrs. Palin are, she certainly has been beneficial to him in terms of publicity and perhaps (yet to be seen) getting more people out to vote. Most people who laugh at the way she haphazardly and mindlessly (was that judgemental?) answers questions by, say, Katie Couric probably were never going to vote for McCain anyway. So it seems he's tried to target certain types of voters to engineer what would have to be a very slight victory...it's just not working as much as he'd like it to. And as much as voters say they hate negative campaigns, and this one has certainly become that, they still hear it all (or worse, only some of it) and those who are still undecided could be swayed by a well-executed issue or character attack even if it's untrue or irrelevant. McCain may be riding on the edge of that one though, by allowing his running mate to step out and call Obama a terrorist at what I'm sure are very fun rallies. Of course there are things that didn't make much sense either - like "stopping" his campaign and ultimately pitching a government buyout of home mortgages and then calling Obama the socialist, or implying that he personally knows some sort of terrorsist-catching secret that he's apparently been unwilling to share with President Bush.

I would say in some regard to continue what he already seems to be doing in working hard to reach certain demographics - those race, religion, and income gaps that overwhelmingly supported President Bush over Kerry in '04 (Olson and Green, 444) to make sure they vote. Perhaps his running mate will help him hold a similar distribution of women's votes too (since McCain probably creeps women out), as Bush ran almost evenly with Kerry in that category in '04 also. To the extent that it is under his control, I think it might be a good time to tone down the personal nature of some of the character attacks directed at Obama. In all seriousness - Fox News can do that part for him; I just think it makes him look desperate and tacky.

Minority Parties in Congress

I write today against my better judgement to suspend my blog posts indefinitely to go to Washington and solve the economic crisis. The role the minority party in Congress, on the whole, often seems to take is to point out flaws (real or imagined) with whatever the majority is doing. Particularly in the House, this follows logically from the idea that representatives behave with all eyes on the next election - incumbents want to be re-elected, and they want their party to take more seats. Without the majority vote in their favor, members of the minority party can more freely take positions further from the ideological center out of personal preference or a desire to gain favor from voters in their district because the party leadership will tend to be less concerned with anything that doesn't directly involve winning the majority back. It is generally in the interest of members of Congress to draw attention to themselves, and in the interest of the minority party to rail against the majority, and the louder they can do so the better. This can be seen today with President Bush's party out of power in Congress - the blame game becomes much easier for both parties. The Republicans can blast Congress for not passing legislation that they favor, and the Democrats have to respect the power of the veto and consider their ability to override it when developing bills. Being contrarian can be a useful and popular tactic, in its own way. Representative Ron Paul of Texas is a good example of this I think. He has his beliefs, votes accordingly, and is well-liked enough in his district that he doesn't have to vote with the Republican Party or talk lovingly about his party-mates to get re-elected. He can always sit back and say he didn't vote for this or that when it's time to run for president again, and he has built a small army of like-minded people who back him.

As far as the bailout bill goes, the explanation for why it took the House two tries to pass it but not the House is due to the inherent differences between the two houses. House Representatives are all up for re-election and are forced to be more directly responsive to their districts. By contrast, only 1/3 of the Senate is up for re-election, so a full 2/3 of them are largely uninhibited by (at least immediate) electoral concerns. If they think it's good, they can vote for it. Some Representatives just can't vote for it if they still want to be in Congress in a few months...unless they have something to sell it to their constituents with. Packaging the bill with other popular tax breaks or other benefits made the bill a more viable option for certain representatives to vote in favor of when they otherwise could or would not have out of concern for their perception in the home district. Aside from individual considerations, the macro pressures of the party could also have had an effect - since the effects of the bill are unlikely to truly be felt (or even understood) by voters come Election Day, neither party desires to be the party that looked like it didn't do anything or didn't care.