The Remaking of John McCain

There is a very interesting article in this week's New York Times Weekend Magazine on the McCain campaign. It is odd in that it is a postmortem of sorts as it attempts to establish the presumption of blame while, at the same time, it is a last ditch attempt to show that McCain is a good, honorable man, which is exemplified through the campaign narratives. Further, it is an excellent example of the invention process, which observers rarely see, and the attempt to gain interpretive dominance for those choices.

The beginning of the article discusses the choices that McCain faced back in September, after the beginning of the economic meltdown but before the first debate. As McCain stiffed Letterman but spoke at Bill Clinton's Global Initiative, McCain's campaign guru, Steve Schmidt, reports that at the Global Initiative, former President Bill Clinton stated this to John McCain:

Schmidt evidently saw the financial crisis as a “true character” moment that would advance his candidate’s narrative. But the story line did not go as scripted. “This has to be solved by Monday,” Schmidt told reporters that Wednesday afternoon in late September, just after McCain concluded his lengthy meeting with his advisers and subsequently announced his decision to suspend his campaign and go to Washington. Belying a crisis situation, however, McCain didn’t leave New York immediately. He spent Thursday morning at an event for the Clinton Global Initiative, the nonprofit foundation run by former President Bill Clinton. As McCain headed for Washington later that morning, he was sufficiently concerned about the situation that Schmidt felt compelled to reassure him. “Remember what President Clinton told you,” Schmidt said, referring to advice Clinton had dispensed that morning: “If you do the right thing, it might be painful for a few days. But in the long run it will work out in your favor.”

Anyone want to interpret Clinton's remarks, especially as they relate to the Presidential campaign and who Clinton supports?

Yet, though this article makes former President Clinton look bad, it makes the Palin selection seem like an absolute farce and absurd political theater intended to appeal to the lowest set of political desires:

One tape in particular struck Davis as arresting: an interview with Palin and Gov. Janet Napolitano, the Arizona Democrat, on “The Charlie Rose Show” that was shown in October 2007. Reviewing the tape, it didn’t concern Davis that Palin seemed out of her depth on health-care issues or that, when asked to name her favorite candidate among the Republican field, she said, “I’m undecided.” What he liked was how she stuck to her pet issues — energy independence and ethics reform — and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage. Consistency. Confidence. And . . . well, look at her. A friend had said to Davis: “The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best — that’s your V. P.”

Country first?

The McCain campaign utilizes Palin to achieve certain rhetorical tropes. First, the campaign hopes people see her as a "conservative activist," hence, the heavy visual use of the family and, especially, the use of Trig. Second, the campaign employs her as a "reformer," which coincides with the "original mavericks" roll out. Further, there is the notion that McCain relies on Palin to fulfill the "Palin as woman" trope whereby people are to view Palin as a woman instead of her talents to appeal to Clinton voters. This trope is to cut ideological distinctions while appealing to identity politics that ripped through the Democratic primary.

The campaign relies on her appearances, i.e. "beauty queen" image to introduce her to the public because of the cultural premise that beauty is desirable or the longstanding notion that beauty reveals the essence of a person- the sign--person or sign--quality correlation. However, beauty for Palin, becomes the issue instead of political substance. When Palin interviewed with Couric and Gibson and these interviews revealed that this sign/person correlation was incorrect, this is where the McCain campaign ran in to some problems and people who supported her needed to argue their case on beauty as an end rather than a means. Hence the movement toward an unwanted "President Barbie" trope and the attacks against Tine Fey where commentators point out that Palin is more attractive than Fey, which is to replace the notion that Fey provides the substance to the relationship between Fey and Palin.

This is why Davis's comments about the cover of Time magazine and "And . . . well, look at her," reinforce the campaign's intent to have a President Barbie...even better is they can play the victim card, which worked well in the Democratic Primary. People like victims in society, so long as they can relate to them. In this regards, beauty helps.


After discussing Palin, the article discuss the contradictions and limitations of the campaign: the search for authenticity and honor; McCain 2008 running against McCain 2000; McCain v. Obama; the loss of political agency because of the media and Obama. While it attempts to recapture the honor of McCain, it reveals that he is a candidate "out of time" in both senses of the phrase: he may be unable to catch up in the presidential race and he was a man that never understood his political circumstance, i.e. he lacked a sense of kairos.