The Spirit of '76
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
The Spirit of ’76 What McCain can learn from Gerald Ford about closing a gap. BY STEPHEN F. HAYES John McCain had two good days late last week. It had been a while. On Thursday, Sarah Palin...
...he is very self-righteous...
...A man who cares about the common man and his problems...
...we really don’t know who he is as a person...
...Man: He changes his mind on the stand every other day or so...
...A man whose thirst for power dominates...
...One McCain adviser says the lessons from 1976 go beyond the campaign...
...The Republican running that year was a moderate, who was mistrusted by conservatives and who did not want to be associated with his predecessor...
...Woman: I like President Ford, a man who will tell you just exactly where he does stand...
...It’s a strategy that has worked before...
...They were right about Carter...
...But three days into October, McCain fi nally had hope that he had stopped his September slide...
...A man concerned about government effi ciency and dedicated to making the government work better...
...The state polls are even more worrisome...
...The memo described the diffi culties facing the campaign—many of which mirror the challenges Barack Obama presents the McCain campaign in 2008...
...The Ford campaign ran a series of ads featuring man-on-the-street interviews with voters discussing Carter...
...A man with real personal appeal...
...The bad economic news has resulted in bad political news...
...Devious and highly partisan (a function of uncontrolled ambition...
...We fi rmly believe that you can win in November,” it declared, with an optimism that must have seemed na?ve...
...There has been no decision made as to whether the campaign will directly raise Obama’s relationship to Reverend Jeremiah Wright...
...This is a particular handicap when we are behind...
...On October 3, the fi rst day of the rest of the campaign, the same tracking poll had him down 7 points...
...May not be experienced enough to be President...
...Man: He seems to be a little wishywashy...
...The criticism is mild by today’s standards...
...A family man...
...A man who wears his religion on his sleeve...
...A man with strong spiritual and moral values...
...McCain has said he doesn’t want to talk about Wright...
...intelligence community was the source of great controversy, there were deep concerns about the rising cost of energy, and the economy was in bad shape...
...A new kind of politician who is against the corrupt Washington system and will not lie...
...Rezko and Ayers are clearly in bounds,” says a top McCain adviser...
...Part of what this debate is about, and the home stretch is about, is focusing the attention on Obama...
...Man: He contradicts himself from one day to the next...
...We raised three questions about him...
...Ford’s convention came in the middle of that period, giving him an added boost...
...The Real Clear Politics average of national polls has McCain trailing Barack Obama by nearly 6 points...
...He is seen as an economic liberal and a social conservative...
...an honest man of character...
...And look at the economy...
...Ford’s advisers refi ned their plan at a high-level meeting at Ford’s vacation home in Vail, Colorado, as the campaign headed into the fall...
...And, on Friday, the House of Representatives voted in favor of the federal bailout, which the Senate had passed two days earlier...
...One, “Was he experienced enough to be president...
...Positive • A winner who has “it...
...A man who tries to be all things to all men...
...McCain is down in Florida, down in Pennsylvania, down in Ohio, even down in Virginia...
...we don’t know where he stands on the issues...
...Negative • An arrogant man...
...not extreme...
...Lacks humility...
...He has largely pulled out of Michigan— once believed to be a winnable light blue state—and he is fi ghting hard in Indiana and North Carolina, two states that Republicans win without trying in most years...
...On September 10, the fi rst Gallup daily tracking poll conducted entirely after the Republican convention gave McCain a 5-point national lead...
...Carter’s popularity is based almost exclusively on his awareness factor...
...As one who uses religion for political purposes...
...Ford’s top strategists drafted a 121page memo for the candidate...
...Who doesn’t know why he wants the Presidency or what he’ll do with it...
...A GOP candidate will always have diffi culty closing a large gap on a Democratic opponent...
...It is Carter’s “newness” and his image as a winner that has carried him to the heights he has reached thus far...
...Look what happened to his presidency...
...If others do, then it’s a topic of conversation and we can join that conversation...
...A man who seems to deal with and resolve issues in a non-controversial way...
...As liberal, well to the left of center and a part of the old-line Democratic majority...
...A Southerner...
...The Ford campaign strategy almost worked...
...And the Iranian hostages...
...I think the basic decision we made there—and I’m not sure we focused on it quite as clearly as I can now with the advantage of twenty years of hindsight—was to shift the question [mark] off of President Ford and onto Jimmy Carter,” Teeter explained...
...The Democrat was new to national politics and almost deifi ed by the media...
...In mid-July 1976, a Gallup poll had Gerald Ford down 33 points to Jimmy Carter...
...Second was, “Did you know enough about him...
...BY STEPHEN F. HAYES John McCain had two good days late last week...
...Seen as a responsible Democrat—not a maverick...
...He is a man with quiet strength...
...Campaign expenditures for both candidates will be the same...
...On Thursday, Sarah Palin performed well enough in her debate with Joe Biden to quiet the critics...
...Democratic registration was up...
...Woman: All the things that we read about Jimmy Carter I think are true that he is fuzzy on a lot of the issues...
...he will not let the politicians run over him...
...an evangelic...
...A second agrees and points to Tuesday’s debate as a key opportunity...
...To win, Ford strategists argued, the campaign had to improve its communications by “choosing our message, simplifying it and repeating it” and by “improving the speeches and tying them to the overall strategy instead of continuing to develop speeches in an organizational vacuum...
...The advisers say the campaign will work to remind voters of Obama’s “corrupt” associations with Tony Rezko and with “the terrorist William Ayers...
...Several McCain advisers believe their campaign should focus on two very similar questions for the fi nal push of the campaign: Who is Barack Obama, and can he lead the country in these diffi cult times...
...We no longer have the previous advantage of being able to outspend our opponent...
...I like him...
...They wanted Carter to be perceived as: • An unknown...
...Woman: He’s much too wishy-washy...
...The goal was to transform his positives into negatives...
...Among them: • Jimmy Carter has experienced a “rapid rise in national popularity” due largely to his “enormous (media) popularity,” which persists despite the fact that he lost “eight out of the last eleven contested primary fi ghts...
...The third was, “Did he have enough of a record as a Governor of Georgia...
...He is in control and will run the country with authority...
...A man about whom we don’t know enough...
...Arrogant—(deceitful...
...In 1976, the country was still divided over an unpopular war, the U.S...
...Inexperienced...
...And it worked in a political environment that looks, in many ways, like this one...
...Bob Teeter, Ford’s pollster, described the meeting in an interview with a historian from the Ford Library...
...Man: Well, if he’d stand up and say what he’s for he’d be a little bit easier to understand and to believe...
...Over the next month, a series of reports on the health of the economy will be released—and none of them will be good...
...We lost more acreage to communism during that time than any other time in history...
...His support is very thin and clearly very vulnerable to deterioration...
...Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins...
...The Democratic Party enjoys a 43% to 21% advantage...
...As a general matter, we need to get this race back to being about Obama,” says one senior adviser to McCain...
...Ford’s strategists believed that voters saw Carter as “mystical, almost evangelical,” and they sought to diminish this view with “a major and highly disciplined attack on the perception of Carter...
...By a two-to-one margin voters blame Republicans for these problems...
...Palin wasn’t fl awless and the bailout is imperfect...
...The memo then assessed Carter’s strengths and weaknesses...
...Republican party identifi cation was down...
...The guy was too risky...
...The economy will get worse—maybe signifi cantly worse—before it gets better...
...By portraying Carter as too much of an unknown and telling voters that supporting the Georgia governor was too risky in such perilous times, Ford closed the gap from 33 points to 2 in ten weeks...
...But it may not be that easy...
Vol. 14 • October 2008 • No. 5
