The Warrior and the Priest
BARNES, FRED
The Warrior and the Priest The revealing campaign styles of John McCain and Barack Obama. BY FRED BARNES John McCain, restless and emotional, couldn’t resist the temptation to join the battle...
...He prevailed...
...He’d be available if needed...
...McCain challenged Obama to ten town hall debates over the summer...
...Obama prefers set speeches delivered with the aid of a teleprompter, a refl ection of his more aloof and less engaged approach to politics and policy...
...This surprise move unnerved Obama and his campaign staff, and they spent several unproductive weeks taking potshots at Palin...
...His campaign would go on...
...The priest won the election...
...Since Obama captured the Democratic nomination last June, he and McCain have taken strikingly different approaches as candidates...
...This is a mistake...
...Wilson, the priest, was “disciplined and controlled,” Cooper wrote...
...The contrast here is not only dramatic...
...There’s an analogy that captures the difference: the warrior and the priest...
...In 1912, Roosevelt and Wilson met in the presidential race...
...The contrast in style between McCain and Obama is a signifi cant dividing line in the campaign—and not just in last week’s bailout battle...
...Sounds like McCain...
...He portrays himself as the real candidate for change in the election...
...In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in August, McCain stressed that he’s a fi ghter...
...The campaign could wait...
...Cooper described Roosevelt, the warrior, as “exuberant and expansive,” a man who “epitomized the enjoyment of power...
...The order never came...
...Obama declined, recognizing these unscripted events favored McCain’s mercurial style of campaigning...
...If “priest” seems confusing, substitute “professor...
...His entry into politics at the highest level was created by his reputation as “a widely regarded public speaker...
...McCain ought to keep this in mind.Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...He returned to Washington reluctantly...
...An abrupt change in plans, a sudden shift, is not his style...
...As a senator, he’s involved himself only on the fringes of big issues...
...Even before McCain’s maneuver he’d rejected the idea of putting his campaign on hold and joining the legislative battle...
...But “fi ghting for you” fi ts perfectly with McCain’s pugnacious persona...
...I don’t mind a good fi ght,” he said...
...Then McCain, like a general changing his tactics on the fl y, picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate...
...There was another candidate, Republican president William Howard Taft, who fi nished third...
...McCain the warrior, Obama the priest...
...As far back as 1962, he waited in Florida as a Navy pilot for the order to attack during the Cuban missile crisis...
...BY FRED BARNES John McCain, restless and emotional, couldn’t resist the temptation to join the battle to rescue our financial markets and save the economy...
...On the bailout, the traditional Democratic position would be to rail against the excesses and corruption of Wall Street...
...He gained fame “through well-cultivated press coverage of his exploits as a reformer, rancher, hunter, police commissioner, war hero, and engaging personality...
...And TR was “associated conspicuously and consistently with one issue above all others— war...
...As a candidate, he likes the rough-and-tumble and unpredictable turns of town hall meetings...
...Being engaged in the action— in the arena—is where McCain always wants to be...
...He took a chance—a small one—when he fl atly rejected McCain’s call to postpone their scheduled debate last week...
...It might even benefit...
...McCain has been a player in every major fi ght, in war and in Washington, for more than four decades...
...But there was a complication that hampered TR...
...The Warrior and the Priest was published in 1983 and was not widely acclaimed, but it’s become a cult classic...
...McCain’s skill at changing direction has spurred him to seize Democratic themes as his own...
...It’s unusually revealing about the two candidates and how they might act as president...
...Where McCain is an activist, Obama is more a visionary...
...So he cast his presidential campaign aside, temporarily, and headed back to Washington...
...Long before the McCain-Obama race, the warrior and the priest comparison was applied to Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in a book by John Milton Cooper Jr., a history professor at the University of Wisconsin...
...But McCain has voiced the “fi ghting for you” refrain only intermittently since the convention...
...It was the biggest and most important fight around, bigger and more important than his campaign scrap with Barack Obama...
...McCain has...
...Absent Taft’s presence, the warrior would have won...
...Until he ran for offi ce, Wilson was “a spectator and a bystander...
...Obama isn’t Wilson personifi ed, but he comes close...
...In electing a president, Americans choose a person, not a party leader...
...Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t like quick changes or taking risks...
...But the ever-cautious Obama hasn’t lambasted Wall Street...
...He played it safe by picking Joe Biden as his running mate...
...His campaign, like the man himself, has been a picture of steadiness and careful planning...
...I fi ght for you...
...I fi ght for Americans...
...He seemingly embodied a less joyful exercise of power...
...When his campaign was at its low point in 2007, he rebuffed the advice of his senior advisers and went on what he called a “no surrender tour,” defending the unpopular war in Iraq...
...He doesn’t have to worry about Obama, who is too fi nicky to exploit the theme relentlessly...
...McCain likes surprises and gambles...
...As a senator, he’s never stayed on the sidelines...
...This amounted once again to the theft of a reliable Democratic trope...
...In Democratic primary debates, he tended to be passive...
...His gamble paid off when the surge reduced violence and brought the war to the verge of victory today...
...It’s a warrior’s message...
...Obama, placid and professorial, had a different reaction to the fi ght over the bailout...
...If he hadn’t, his campaign might have suffered...
...Roosevelt was a “tireless evangelist for international activism,” anybut Wilson had “a more pacifi c vision...
...Personal traits—character, likeability, temperament, public style—matter...
Vol. 14 • October 2008 • No. 4
