McCain: Searching for a message

John McCain’s campaign has hit “a troubled stretch,” said Adam Nagourney in The New York Times. With the Republican presidential nomination secure, he should be calmly plotting strategy for November while enjoying the spectacle of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ripping each other to shreds. But in recent weeks, five of McCain’s senior campaign staffers have resigned amid revelations that they’d been lobbying for such clients as the military junta in Myanmar and Saudi Arabia’s oil sheikhs. And McCain had to reject the endorsement of not one but two controversial evangelical pastors—one of whom said the Holocaust was part of biblical prophesy, and the other of whom described Islam as “a conspiracy of spiritual evil.” To party leaders, it’s starting to look as if McCain’s campaign is woefully short on focus and discipline. Phone banks and local campaign offices are unmanned, and the candidate himself still seems unsure of his message. With the current “Democratic turmoil” nearing its resolution, Republicans are starting to worry whether McCain is ready “to present a case for his candidacy.”

Don’t blame McCain alone, said The Washington Times in an editorial. After the rampant deficit spending of the Bush era, the entire Republican Party is caught in “an identity crisis of its own making,’’ with voters in an angry mood. So on what message does McCain run? The GOP’s usual claim to being the party of “fiscal responsibility” is probably best avoided. As for abortion, gay marriage, and the other so-called wedge issues that can usually be relied upon to fire up the social conservative base, McCain’s history as a social moderate renders them virtually moot. Meanwhile, energized Democrats are rallying behind the “innovative candidacy” of Barack Obama. November could be a very bad month indeed for the Grand Old Party.

Then again, November could be the month that John McCain gives the GOP its soul back, said Yuval Levin in The Weekly Standard. It’s too late for McCain to “invent a campaign theme from scratch,” so his only real option is to trade on his established reputation as a principled reformer. As a maverick beholden to no one, it’s McCain who can bring some sanity to the health-care system, who can introduce school choice into education, who can fix the broken tax code. Rather than try to duck or sidestep voters’ anger against the GOP, McCain is uniquely positioned to harness it—and in the process, give Republicans back their sense of purpose and identity.

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