In a political campaign, it’s all about winning.
After all, what good is it to be a politician if you don’t win campaigns? A politician only gets into position to enact his/her policy ideas if he/she wins elections.
(Which reminds me of a flashback scene in an early episode of ”The West Wing.” Toby Ziegler, who was the White House communications director for most of the series, is discussing his background as a political operative with a woman in a tavern. The conversation is occurring just before Ziegler believes he will be fired from the staff of Martin Sheen’s fledgling presidential campaign.
(The woman asks Toby about his record in political campaigns. ”How many elections have you won?” she asks. ”Altogether?” he asks her. She nods. ”Including city council, two congressional elections, a Senate race, a gubernatorial campaign, and a national campaign?” he asks.
(There’s a long pause. Then Toby says, ”None.” The woman looks bewildered. ”None of them?” she asks. Toby replies, ”You gotta be impressed with my consistency.”)
As Vince Lombardi used to say, winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.
Unlike a sports event, where you have a scoreboard to tell you who’s ahead and who’s behind and how much time is left before a winner will be declared, there are few ways to be certain who’s leading in a political campaign. The calendar gives us a deadline for the completion of the campaign; otherwise, there are few reliable indicators that can reveal the identity of the leader.
Some people will say that public opinion polls serve that purpose. But others will point out that polls can be manipulated, in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons.
My personal belief is that, like anything else, public opinion polls can be mishandled. Questions can be phrased in a way that tends to favor one candidate/issue or another.
At best, if a poll question is phrased and presented in as neutral a manner as possible, the results can serve only as a snapshot of the electorate at a particular time.
If such a poll/snapshot is taken on September 14, it can tell us how the voters feel generally on that date. But it can’t tell us how every voter feels because every voter won’t be included in the survey.
And it can’t assure us that the results will be duplicated precisely when the voters go to the polls in seven weeks.
Political campaigns will ebb and flow, especially when the incumbent is not on the ballot. In such a campaign, the nominee of the incumbent’s party has to act as the stand-in, taking the criticism (or praise) that rightfully belongs to the incumbent.
It’s not entirely fair that John McCain should be the fall guy for the many mistakes that have been made by George W. Bush and the Republican Party — even though it’s true that he has been supportive of much of Bush’s agenda for nearly eight years.
Nevertheless, first as the presumptive nominee and now as the actual nominee, McCain must carry the burden of the administration’s unpopular record — much as Adlai Stevenson had to do for President Truman in 1952.
(In Stevenson’s defense, he bore less culpability for Truman’s record, as a state governor, than McCain bears for Bush’s record, as a member of Congress.
(But Stevenson had the misfortune of running for president against a popular war hero, Dwight Eisenhower. And, even if you support Obama, you have to admit he’s no Ike.)
But now that McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate has given his campaign a boost in the polls, some observers are looking at the election through new eyes — or, at least, new reading glasses.
In the Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery refers to her colleague, TIME’s Joe Klein, and his ”anticipation” of the apology he will receive (but will not accept) from McCain ”for the unworthy, nasty, disreputable and really mean campaign he has run” (those are Emery’s words) — once the campaign is over.
Emery, acting on the assumption (apparently based on recent polls) that McCain will win the election, contends there is no reason McCain should offer such an apology — even though an apology should be issued by McCain for the distortion in a McCain commercial of a vote Barack Obama cast as an Illinois state senator for a bill designed to protect children from sexual predators.
”[C]omplaints by the press about ‘mean’ campaigning are a reliable sign to Republicans that their tactics are working,” Emery writes.
Emery also suggests that there are two reasons why the press ever liked McCain in 2000:
- He ran against Bush.
- He lost.
Actually, this defiant, never-say-you’re-sorry stance is nothing new for Emery. Shortly before the 2004 election, she wrote a similar column for National Review urging Bush not to apologize for anything.
The prevailing attitude these days is that McCain has seized the momentum. As I say, it largely appears to be based on recent poll results, and the polls’ plausibility depends to a great extent upon how much faith one places in their methodology.
David Paul Kuhn writes, for Politico.com, that there are five ”trends” that may explain why McCain is perceived to have taken the lead:
- ”McCain as a ‘change agent.’”
- ”The center shifts: Independents move to McCain.”
- ”The economic gap narrows.”
- ”Palin narrows the enthusiasm gap.”
- ”Democrats voter ID edge dulls.”
He makes no attempt to conceal that fact; indeed, his entire article is based on poll findings.
And that’s my point.
The fretting about the shift in momentum is based entirely on poll results. No one has voted yet — except, perhaps, in terms of financial contributions. In that area, Obama continues to enjoy a big lead — which is practically unheard-of for Democrats.
The candidates have seven weeks to make their cases to the American public. Be prepared: Polls may shift frequently during that time.
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