Yesterday's Republicans for Obama conference call hosted by Jim Leach was notable for the image of nonpartisan appeal it projected -- and not simply because the people on it were Republicans. The rhetoric employed by the Republicans endorsing Obama reveals part of the Obama campaign's fall strategy -- to position Obama as the traditional, common-sense candidate and McCain as the dangerous radical.
Such imagery runs counter to the framing of McCain as a comfortable, reliable presence and Obama as a dangerous, unfamiliar figure. And it seems discordant with Obama's own positioning as an outsider to Washington who will bring change. Looked at more closely, however, and this branding of Obama as being more traditional than McCain is central to the theme of Change You Can Believe In. If pursued successfully, the rhetoric voiced yesterday will make it very difficult for John McCain to win the presidency this November.
More about the conference call and how it reveals a major aspect of the fall campaign strategy after the jump.
The call was hosted by former Republican House member Jim Leach, who represented Iowa's First District for thirty years before voters kicked him out in 2006 over revulsion with Bush's Iraq War. It wasn't that Leach supported the war, but voters believed his opponent Dave Loebsack had a better chance to end it than Leach did. It wasn't that the voters disrespected Leach, either. He maintained high personal approval ratings throughout the campaign and even after he lost the election. His continued membership in Bush's Republican Party, however, made it impossible for his constituents to keep him in office. In short, Leach was a dinosaur, a Reasonable Republican in a time when the Republican Party is anything but reasonable. He knows it, too, as his comments yesterday (which I will get to at the end of this diary) make clear.
Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee was in much the same position as Leach, losing to Sheldon Whitehouse despite favorable approval ratings. Chafee subsequently changed his voting registration from Republican to Independent (a move that probably would have saved his job had he done it in 2006). Though considered a maverick Republican Senator like John McCain, Chafee broke with his former colleague yesterday, lumping McCain in with Bush and Cheney:
"I served with Sen. McCain, and he and I were the only two to vote against the Bush/Cheney tax cuts," recalled Chafee. "During this campaign it is a different John McCain. He is saying he would make the tax cuts permanent. He is advocating more drilling whereas he voted against drilling in ANWR. It goes to his credibility. And that is such an important issue for this country... plus his foreign policy has been consistently with Bush/Cheney and I know from my perspective that is a huge issue for the United States."
"His foreign policy has been consistently with Bush/Cheney and I know from my perspective that is a huge issue for the United States." Chafee infers that Bush's foreign policy is outside of the mainstream of American values. This inference is consistent with, well, pretty much every poll of the American people on the subject of Iraq over the past several years.
The theme that McCain's foreign policy position is radical rather than comfortable was explicitly put forth by another speaker. Former Bush administration intelligence expert (and by Bush, I mean Dubya, who appointed her to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board three weeks after 9-11) Rita Hauser argued that Obama has the mainstream foreign policy stance:
"I think the little flare up we are witnessing in Georgia is another illustration of the different approach these two men are taking," she said. "McCain is bellicose: threatening to kick Russia out of the G8, use force if it is required. Obama is far more of the traditional position: turn to international institutions, call for reconciliation, call for an end of hostilities, but also be firm in his words. And that's the kind of leadership we need."
Using this rhetoric, change we can believe in is not merely something new and unfamiliar. It is, from the point of view of these disaffected Republicans, a change back to a more reasoned, sensible politics, the kind that is no longer welcome in the Republican Party. (And that these Americans no longer find room for themselves in a dangerously radical Republican Party.) Chafee argues that McCain today is not a reasonable man. Hauser calls him bellicose and offers Obama up as the traditional choice in this election. Here's where Leach did his job as the host of the conference call, driving home the rhetorical point that Obama is the one candidate who represents mainstream American thought. Leach agrees with Hauser, hammering home the theme that of the two candidates for president, only Obama has common sense:
"In my judgment there's a difference between realism and pseudo-realism," Leach said. "The pseudo-realists believe that we can operate in the world alone, that expanding international law doesn't matter, that things like arms control are false starts."
"You try to work with allies, rather than without them," Leach added. "And that is the kind of realism that I think is common sense to the vast majority of the American people, and that's what Senator Obama is reflecting in so many of his speeches."
Leach concludes:
"This is not a time for politics as usual," said the former congressman. "The portfolio of issues passed on to the next president is as daunting as any since WWII. The case for inspiring new political leadership and the social ethic has seldom been more evident. Barack Obama's platform is a call for change, but the change that he is articulating is more renewal than departure. ... It is rooted in very old American values that are very much part of the Republican as well as the Democratic tradition. ... The national interest requires a new approach to our interaction with the world -- including the recognition that a long-term occupation of Iraq is likely dangerously destabilizing."
The terrifying fact of the early 21st century is that politics as usual are radical, un-American, and ultimately counterproductive to the interests of the American people. McCain offers more of the same extremism we have seen from Bush, from Cheney, from the GOP in Washington. And that sameness is horrifying to contemplate.
Change we can believe in. Change as renewal. We as Americans, even those who may have voted for Reagan, Dole, or Bush. A return to reasoned, sensible leadership after the most dangerous, destructive, and dispiriting administration in memory. If yesterday's conference call at all resonates in the themes the campaign will pursue at the convention and on the trail this fall, Obama is positioning himself squarely in the mainstream of American values. How McCain will counter that effectively remains to be seen.
Will it work? John Kerry attempted to claim the common-sense vote with his "let America be America again" appeal four years ago, but I don't recall the Kerry campaign using members of the opposing party to make that case. The Republicans did their best to marginalize Kerry as a fringe elitist rather than a candidate of mainstream American values; certainly we see the McCain campaign attempting to do the same to Obama. Really, they have few options: Obama's appeal is already wider than Kerry's was across demographic groups, Obama has closed the fundraising gap Kerry had against the Republicans, and the Democratic candidate's ground game this cycle is more vigorous than the post-Reagan Republican Party has ever seen from an opponent. Should Obama succeed in positioning himself as the candidate of traditional American common sense, McCain will have a rough autumn.
Such an appeal may be stronger coming from voices like Leach's, Chafee's, and Hauser's; my guess is it will be even more persuasive coming from friends and neighbors. It can't hurt to make the case the Republicans for Obama made during yesterday's conference call to friends and neighbors (and strangers) who are as yet undecided. Doing that work now (as well as the work of registering more new voters) will help the campaign make its case that we are offering not the exotic, not the unknown, but rather a renewal of traditional American values with the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.