Bullet the Blue Sky:

A Nation Embraces Change and a Political Party is Left Wondering What Hit It.

In the end it was the American people who finally got it after all; the American people who collectively stood up and, like that crazy anchorman in the movie “Network”, shouted out loud and clear, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” More than sixty four million voters pulled the lever for Barack Obama, almost eight million more than John McCain got. Of the 538 possible electoral votes cast in the election 364 went to Obama, 174 went to McCain. It was, for all intents and purposes, a landslide victory, but more importantly it was a resounding repudiation of not only a failed policy, but of a failed politics. If you are a Republican today you are in dire need of some long, overdue soul searching.

For lost in all the hoopla of what is clearly the most significant milestone in American history – that of an African American being elected president of the United States – is the fact that for all the clamor for change that was resonating though out the electorate, and the fear that this eloquent and most statesmanlike of politicians – one part Kennedy, one part Lincoln, one part King, Jr. – might make a serious misstep and, like the last two democratic candidates before him, fumble the ball the one yard line, it was John McCain, the former maverick, who fell on his sword and got routed.

Let’s not forget that it was McCain who was ahead in the most critical demographic: independents. This voter group represents almost a third of the electorate and as early as June, they were expected to vote resoundingly for Obama. Except something was going terribly wrong in Obamaland. With less than a month to go before the Republican National Convention, McCain held a slight lead over Obama among moderates and was within two points of him overall.

So what happened? Pundits continue to blame the economic meltdown for McCain’s undoing. Someone had to take the bullet for the economy and the conventional wisdom is that when things go badly the incumbent party takes the wrap. The other contention is that the McCain campaign never got their ground game going. They had sowed up the nomination a full three months before Obama had clinched, and yet they never got their message out. Obama, meanwhile, had established the most aggressive and well-staffed network of volunteers in decades. The avalanche of support, coupled with a seemingly endless supply of campaign donations, simply overwhelmed McCain.

But while both these explanations are plausible, both are also excuses. The very simple and most salient reason that John McCain lost the presidential election of 2008 was his pick of Sarah Palin for vice president. No doubt her supporters will claim she is being made the scapegoat for a campaign that was never able to define a coherent message that it could market to the nation. There is certainly some truth to that. At what most pundits called the critical juncture of the campaign - the rollout of the proposed $700 billion bailout - the announcement that McCain was suspending his campaign to fly down to Washington, had even his most ardent supporters scratching their heads in amazement. A week before that he boldly stated that the fundamentals of the economy were strong.

But, still, despite the missteps and miscues, the election was still there to be won. And that was because, for all the seeming substantive similarities between him and Bush, there were still enough voters who believed in that maverick image of John McCain. There were still enough people who remembered how he had been savaged in that shameful 2000 Republican primary by the likes of Karl Rove. He had built up a reputation over two and a half decades of irritating his own party just enough to keep them honest. With all of Obama’s millions, the memory of McCain was still alive in the hearts and minds of the electorate. He defeated the likes of Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Mr. 9/11 himself (Rudy Giuliani), not by running to the extreme right flank of his party, but by running to its middle. In doing so he incurred the wrath of all the conservative talking heads like Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, none of whom had any use for McCain. Mary Matalin, wife of Democratic strategist James Carville, publicly supported Fred Thompson and stated that John McCain had virtually no chance of winning the presidency.

And yet with all the backlash of the conservative right, in what was clearly a change year, with the exception of those first few weeks after Obama had wrapped up the Democratic nomination and had jumped out to an early lead, McCain was holding his own. All of the prominent polls showed the race to be a statistical dead heat. And then it happened. The Democrats held their convention in Denver; Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate, not Hillary Clinton like some had foolishly thought, and suddenly McCain was down six points in the polls. He needed something daring, something unexpected, something that could unite the conservative base of his party, and at the same time capitalize on the resentment he felt was still being harbored by many Hillary supporters, angered that their candidate was not on the Democratic ticket. In what can only be described as an act of desperation, he chose Alaskan governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. The base was beside itself with glee. It was the proverbial two birds with one stone moment. A woman and a Christian conservative all in one package. Not only would they unite the party, but they would steal away all the disenfranchised Hillary supporters. Hello Whitehouse.

Initially, the pick proved to be a stroke of genius. Less than a week after the Republican convention, McCain was up two points in the popular vote. Furthermore, and more importantly, he was up in all the battleground states he needed to win the Whitehouse. But something went terribly wrong with the former Wasilla mayor. The more people got a chance to hear her speak, the more they began to realize not only how unready and unprepared she was for the office of vice-president; the more uneasy they became with who she was as a person. There is a golden rule for all vice-presidential picks: do no harm. With each passing day, and each passing interview, Sarah Palin was doing more damage to John McCain than the economic implosion was. The irony was that while conservatives loved her, independents, that demographic that often decides presidential elections, were growing increasingly alarmed at her political stances and he divisive rhetoric. This was particularly troublesome for McCain, since it was this very demographic that got him the nomination in the first place. A full week before the infamous “fundamentals are strong” comment, Obama regained the lead among independents and never looked back. In retrospect the housing market collapse sealed the deal. Obama looked more presidential; McCain looked like someone who was groping for a message to rile up his base. The chants of socialism and terrorists became almost comical in the midst of a historic recession that was ravaging the nation. Sarah Palin may have been appealing to what she thought was the “real” America, but the nation as a whole wasn’t buying it. Her negatives, and those of John McCain’s, rose with each passing day. Not even caricatures such as the likes of Joe the Plumber could stop the hemorrhaging. McCain, like the economy, went south fast.

And now that this election is over, now that the nation has chosen someone with the proper temperament to lead us out of this malaise, the postmortems will begin. It will be a hard pill to swallow, but the Republican party is essentially in the same place the Democratic party was in 1980 when Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter: fragmented and politically isolated, with a tired and worn out message no one of consequence wants to hear. If you look carefully at the nation what you will find is astounding. Obama won in every part of the country: the north, the south, the mid-west, the west coast, and the southwest. Only the plain states, the deep south and the Appalachian trail eluded him. The inclusive nation that Reagan had helped to create in the 1980s had left in droves to support not only a Democratic presidential candidate, but both houses of Congress. The Republican party has now become a party in full retreat, at war with itself and unable to come up with a populist message to stir the electorate. Family values, abortion, the war on terror may play well on Fox, but not in the millions of homes across America. When you can’t pay your mortgage, and you don’t know if you’re going to have a job next week, and your 401k looks more like a 201k, you need real leaders who have real solutions. The Republicans never articulated a real message that real Americans could latch onto. What is troubling is that there doesn’t appear to be any body within the party that can reverse its fortunes. Mitt Romney? Mike Huckabee? Please, spare me. What’s worse, if you’re a Republican, is the total denial of what went wrong in the first place. In the halls of conservative talk shows, the bravado is appalling. McCain and Palin weren’t tough enough; they needed to hammer Obama earlier and more often, as though eight weeks of non-stop verbal diarrhea weren’t enough to thoroughly turn off all but the most unabashedly myopic bigoted pinheads. When people like George Will start disowning you, you’ve got problems!

If the Republican party is to ever rise up, dust itself off and, more importantly, become a major player on a national level, it is going to have to do what the Democrats did in 1992: find a centrist who will bring some balance to its ranks. Allowing the James Dobsons and the Rush Limbaughs free reign to kidnap the party has severely damaged its pedigree among independents, and compromised any hope now and in the future of capturing the national stage. The Right loves to tout the conservatism of Reagan, but they forget that he couldn’t have won the presidency without moderate Democrats, any more than Bill Clinton could’ve won the 1992 election without moderate Republicans. The nation is neither conservative nor liberal; it is what it has always been: a collection of independent thinkers who look for leadership from their leaders. If the Republicans are truly serious about winning back the Whitehouse, they need to find someone who can stand up to the right flank of the party and at the same time appeal to the masses. McCain, for all his legendary maverick status, clearly was not up to the task. Too often throughout this campaign he seemed clueless as to what to do or say on the economy, and when it came to going on the attack he seemed uncomfortable resorting to the mudslinging that Bush and Rove did so well against John Kerry in 2004. In the end it was impossible to differentiate who was on top of the ticket: him or Palin. In the end it didn’t seem to matter; he became what he most despised about the very process he once fought against. That, more than anything was what did him in.

No, I’m thinking what the Republicans need most is not another Ronald Reagan, but rather a Dwight D. Eisenhower type; a man who is a true leader and is respected by both parties. If Obama does not pick him for a cabinet post, Colin Powell might be the ideal choice. He incurred the wrath of the ultra right-wing of the party for his endorsement of Obama, which was more a repudiation of McCain and Palin, but he could just be the “right” tonic for a tattered and torn party that desperately needs to be saved from the inmates and nutjobs who are currently running the asylum.