Not a Big Truck

The McCain campaign is running a dishonest and dishonorable campaign.  It has decided to throw out as many shiny metal objects as possible in hopes of distracting voters and the media from issues or stories that could be devastating to McCain’s candidacy.  Give them credit, they’ve been really good at it over the last few weeks.

Republicans and Democrats have used such tactics before. As an earlier post notes, however, Republicans tend to use them more often and, probably, more successfully. So, in that sense, this campaign hasn’t provided that much that is new in terms of dirty tactics.

What does seem remarkable about the McCain campaign is its apparent lack of an ideological core. What does it stand for? Why does he want to be president? What are Republicans bringing to the table that is different than the last eight years? What improvements have they made to the Goldwater/Reagan Republican party?

Bush at least had “compassionate conservatism” (2000) and the notion of exporting American democracy through hard power (2004).  Even if neither of those ideas materialized into something beneficial, it at least lent some sort of meaning to those campaigns. At this point, it seems like Republicans are running just to remain in power, offering no agenda.  Maybe I’m missing something, but “reforming Washington” just doesn’t seem like a guiding philosophy for a party, especially one that would be reforming the government that it has largely controlled for the last 8 years.   

Say what you will about Goldwater/Reagan Republicanism (it certainly had its limitations, but there was a governing philosophy there. Goldwater took a massive defeat in 1964, partly because he refused to compromise on his guiding principles. Reagan didn’t alter his positions to fit the electorate, he held his positions until the electorate moved to him. There was an intellectual current to that movement.

What is the intellectual current running through McCain’s candidacy? Country First? This lack of a vision for the country, I think, is the reason the McCain campaign focuses so much on winning the short-term battles in the media.  They release tough ad after tough ad to keep the attention of the media and to create the perception that they are winning, but seem to provide very little in terms of revealing any novel intellectual insights into how reform or change will be instituted in government. 

The campaign is trying to win this election to govern, but governing should be a means to an end. Some policies or some governing philosophy should be the end. The current Republican party is trying to govern for the sake of governing or, at most, just to prevent the Democrats from governing.

The Conservative party in Britain has been out of power for over a decade. Things were grim for that party during the Blair years. But while out of power, they reformed themselves, found a fresh intellectual core, and adjusted their conservatism to meet modern challenges. Relying on Thatcher’s conservatism no longer sufficed.

The Republican party must recognize that it will have to cut its ties to Reaganism and find a new intellectual current to revive its party. Such a revival will be difficult to occur while still in control of the government. Campaigning simply for the right to govern and not for the opportunity to infuse new ideas will only delay the inevitable reconfiguration that American conservatism must undergo.

Then again, as an Obama supporter, maybe I’m just hoping the Republican take a dive.