Turning Points

A number of bloggers contributed to the New York Times article on turning points in the campaign, before the results were known. In the spirit of Kevin Drum, who changed his response today, I'll take the opportunity to offer my unasked-for response, with benefit of hindsight. Two key moments:

-- When Kerry got no significant bounce in the polls out of his convention. As I wrote two days ago, I came to really appreciate Kerry as a candidate, and while we can all fantasize about a candidate with more down-home warmth or a Southern accent or a less Senate-vote-compromised record, I ask you to find one whom you can confidently predict could also withstand a massively funded, completely fabricated attack, plus survive four and a half hours of debate. But it was very odd and should have been a real warning sign when Kerry came out so flat from his convention. It's been over-analyzed to death, mostly to the conclusion that the convention overemphasized his personal qualities and Vietnam experience and did not show a vision. That may be. I think more likely is that Kerry just doesn't make a great first impression. People seem to warm to him slowly. I think he would wear well, and after a year of seeing him on TV as the leader of the nation, his dignity and his values would be understood. But it's not to be. Instead, he came out of the convention with a base of barely 50%, which was all too easy to knock down with the Swift Boat fraud, leaving Kerry fighting to get himself back up over 50.

-- The rapprochement between Bush and McCain. Senator McCain was never going to join Kerry as his running mate, nor should he have. But there was a period as recently as the early summer when it looked for all the world like McCain was very happy to sit this one out, and to let it be known that he despised Bush on many levels and admired and liked Kerry on just as many, which I think remains true. And yet at some point he gave that posture up. In the month leading up to the election, there was a flood of principled, independent conservatives who turned against Bush -- some of the newspaper editorial boards, some public intellectuals, some bloggers, and some McCainites like Marshall Wittman. But there was no one whose name was known beyond the narrow confines of political cyberspace, no one who would publicly symbolize the counter-reaction in the way that McCain could have. McCain's tacit abstention would have been a very potent symbol for upper- and middle-income white men especially, who it seems were the group that returned most solidly to Bush after starting to drift away.

What happened with McCain? I've heard some explanations from those who might know: He understands that his future is within the Republican Party. He has a huge, not surprising, sense of duty and loyalty to the person who wears the title Commander in Chief. Bush and Rove finally realized that they needed to reach out to him and ask for his support, and had they done so earlier they would have received it. And finally, that Rove did some unknown something to repair his very bitter breach, of unknown cause, with McCain political advisor John Weaver, who had gone over to the Democrats. (Franklin Foer covered some of this ground in The New Republic in August, but couldn't really explain it either, except perhaps as laying the ground for a 2008 presidential run.)

I've also heard that McCain extracted a solemn vow from Bush to really work on campaign finance reform in the second term. There's nothing wrong with pledging your support in exchange for such a promise on your pet issue -- if it's a promise to really fix the presidential system of public financing and perhaps create a public financing system for congressional races similar to the Arizona system that McCain supports. But I doubt that's a promise Bush could offer. DeLay and McConnell aren't going to stand for that. On the other hand, what if the only promise McCain got was for legislation to restrict 527 committees? That would be awfully small potatoes, especially as Bush would be perfectly content to punish 527s, since have been so closely identified with Democrats because Republicans don't need them. Watching how this issue plays out in the next Congress (and my guess is that nothing will happen with it at all, and that whatever vague promise Bush made to McCain is as serious as his pledge to the Texas Air National Guard) will answer some questions about this very key moment in the campaign.