Straight talk in Poland
Casting an eye to the US presidential race, WBJ sits down with Terry Nelson, former national campaign manager for John McCain, and Trygve Olson, former country director for Belarus at the International Republican Institute. They offered their insight into the McCain campaign, the overall election and the American political system itself
What is the biggest challenge for John McCain?
Terry Nelson: The political environment is the biggest challenge - in a year in which it was more neutral for Republicans, John McCain would be in an excellent position. He's in a good position to win right now, but the current environment makes it more problematic for him.
I'll give you an example. We just had a special election [in the US] and it was the third special election that the Republicans have lost recently. The Republicans lost the seat by about eight points. As in all races, there were certainly local issues here, but it was a very Republican seat - it voted 61 percent for the president in 2004 - and the loss of those special elections just shows the headwinds that the Republicans are facing in the political environment this year.
The president's approval is not high, people are very unhappy with the direction of the country, mostly on the issues of Iraq and the economy. And because Republicans have been in the leadership for so long, we're going to tend to get the blame for the policy issues. It's been especially true, historically, that the party in power takes most of the political blame when there are economic issues in the country.
Trygve Olson: The party from which the president comes [takes the blame], not so much Congress. And I think some of it is just fatigue, as well. There was a lot of talk at the start of the race that you could go Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. I think to some extent you see this with both McCain and Obama, both are, to some extent, candidates of change within their parties and I think voters are in a place where they're looking for something different. There's a real fatigue with the status quo of politics and that impacts McCain's position.
Which Democratic candidate would McCain have a harder run against? Why?
TN: I think it's really hard to say. Hillary Clinton is a very polarizing figure in US politics. Her "favorable rating" is, I think, only 43 percent or so. That's a horrible place to be; it's not atypical for a presidential candidate to be in the mid-40s at the end of an election, but to be there in the beginning is a bad place to be. She has a very difficult time with independent voters and conservative democrats. All of these have been issues for her.
Barack Obama is inexperienced, though his argument is that the other candidates have the wrong kind of experience. But the electorate is very divided right now between people who want an experienced leader - somebody who's tested - and a group of people who want change. In the US, most of the energy at the moment is really with the change people, not surprisingly. But the country is closely divided on that question, and you see that reflected in the ballot tests between Obama and McCain.
Last year when people would be excited about running against Hillary Clinton, I would always say 'she's going to get 48, 49 percent of the vote at the beginning of the race.' And if she started out in such a good place, it wouldn't be that much harder to get from there to 50 or 51 percent. But that last couple of percentage points for her has actually turned out to be very difficult territory because all those people know her.
They both have strengths, they both have weaknesses, and these differ. But it's not clear yet which one would be the better candidate to run against this fall. Having said that, the candidate we're going to run against is Barack Obama. That's nearly decided.
Is it going to hurt the Democratic Party that Clinton is holding on so tightly in the race?
TN: I don't think so, not yet. If it went to the Democratic convention, I think that it would be very harmful for the Democrats. Frankly, I'm sure they would all be happy to have it be over. But Barack Obama has caused more problems for himself than Hillary Clinton has caused for him. Whether it was the Jeremiah Wright stuff or what he said in San Francisco about bitter small-town voters - Hillary didn't make do or say those things. He's really caused his own problems.
So don't see that it's been a huge drawback for them yet, but if it did go to the convention it would be very divisive for their party and it would be very hard to come together after the election.
You've said that "McCain will either improve the fortunes of the party, or will the party be an anchor for him." How can he improve the fortunes of the party?
TN: In the United States the presidential nominee's vision for the country tends to be the vision for the party. As Trygve mentioned, I think that people are looking for something different and he can definitely offer something different. He's been a different kind of Republican his whole life and American voters know him that way. If his campaign message can get traction and it resonates with voters, other Republican candidates will echo his message and get behind it. And that will improve the fortunes of the party.
McCain rates rather poorly with gun-owner and anti-immigration organizations. He doesn't have the same reach as Bush with evangelicals. Can he turn out the Republican base?
TN: You're right on the ratings. Having said that, McCain was invited to address the NRA convention. For gun-owners it will be a choice between him and a Democratic candidate, who will be much tougher on guns than McCain is.
And the truth is that McCain's record on guns is actually, in some ways, more conservative than the current president's. President Bush supports an assault weapons ban, which John McCain does not. He would repeal that. On other things, he's more for gun control. McCain supports closing the gun-show loophole in the United States, while George Bush does not. There's not a clearcut case to be made that he's against that constituency.
John McCain does not have a support problem inside the Republican Party, he doesn't have a support problem with conservatives. He shares what is a broad Republican problem - there's a lack of enthusiasm right now among Republican voters. That's not John McCain's fault, that's just something he has to deal with and try to fix.
You've said that McCain needs to rebrand himself. To what?
TN: I think [his campaign is] answering that question. They have to rebrand as a different kind of Republican and part of that is what he did recently, giving a major address on climate change, spending the whole week addressing that issue. The campaign is going to have to pick out some issues like that, which show that he will lead differently than the current president.
And he also is going to take on the mantle of change. This is not specific to him, though - any Republican candidate that ran as a continuation of the Bush presidency would lose. He has to present himself as a candidate of change. To do this, he will go back to his record on things like climate change, on campaign finance reform.
Will McCain bring the Republican party back to its small-government roots?
TN: He wants to. He's been very strong against "pork-barrel spending" for many years. He's pledged since the very beginning of the campaign that he would veto any bill that came to him that contained pork-barrel spending.
So, he definitely is trying to bring it back. And I think part of the reason for Republican despondency is that Republican voters looked at spending in the Republican Congress - and also spending by the president - and were dissatisfied with that. So one of the things he's aggressively tried to do is to refocus people on the small-government lines that the Republican Party used to embody.
Does portraying McCain as "seasoned" or "experienced" in comparison to Obama risk turning these words into synonyms for "old?"
TN: I don't think so. When I was in the campaign, our attitude towards the issue of age was always that voters would see him campaign, they would be exposed to him and they would make their own judgment about his ability to do the job. I think one of the things that happened in the primary was that reporters would travel with John McCain and see how active and engaged he was and see that it was not an issue.
The age issue exists in the electorate, but there's no way to say "McCain's up to the task," that's not how you run a campaign. I think that they will continue just to show John McCain as the active person that he truly is.
The experience question is a prime contrast with Obama and, even if there is some downside on the age side of it, the upside in that contrast is very significant. I think what they'll try to do is say "he's experienced, but experienced in making change."
Can McCain win with [the gay wing of the party] the Log Cabin Republicans?
TN: The Log Cabin Republicans had a conference in California recently and McCain asked Governor Schwartzeneggar to address the conference on his behalf. He said that he would meet with a delegation of the Log Cabin Republicans' leadership. So I think that he is trying to bring together all parts of the party.
The upside with McCain is that everybody knows where he stands. The various constituencies in the party will not be satisfied with every position he takes, and the Log Cabin Republicans [are no exception]. But they're going to understand where he comes from and why he has the perspective he has.
How can we expect him to handle the anti-missile shield?
TN: I don't really know his position on that. I suspect that he supports it, but I've never heard him speak on the subject so I couldn't say.
A recent ad by McCain linked destructive weather, in other words global warming, with national security. Do you think he can successfully link the two in Republican voters' minds?
TN: I don't know. I think that ad came out while I was here [in Europe]. It's hard for me to comment, since I haven't seen the ad yet.
How long will a McCain-led America remain in Iraq?
TN: This is obviously a subject of debate in the United States because of what McCain has said on the subject. I really don't know... You see two things in the American electorate right now: disappointment and dissatisfaction with being in Iraq, but also the definite majority thinking that leaving would be irresponsible because of the security situation.
As president, I think that he would try to make the security situation better and if he got to the point that there was security in Iraq then he would, as he's said, look to have a South-Korea-type
situation there, or the kind of situation we had in Western Europe during the Cold War. There are still troops stationed in parts of Western Europe. His point is that Americans don't care that there are troops in Germany or in South Korea…
...because those troops aren't dying.
Exactly. What Americans care about is the deaths and injuries in Iraq. If we get to the point where the situation is stable, he would keep troops there if it was part of the overall security solution for Iraq.
Is the budget deficit an issue for McCain? Given his commitment to Iraq and Afghanistan, how does he plan to balance the budget without repealing Bush's tax cuts?
TN: It's definitely an issue for him and I think he can address it. He put forward a plan to radically reduce spending and if Congress is able to implement that plan then the answer is yes, he could continue with the tax cuts, he could reduce the size of government and the deficit. It would ultimately be about President McCain giving Congress the political will and backbone to implement these reforms, but he would have to work very hard to force them to do this.
It also depends on the rate of economic growth in the United States.
Which candidate's interests are closest aligned with Poland's interests?
TO: If we're comparing McCain and Obama... I think you'd have to say that John McCain has an extended record when it comes to this region, going back to the 1980s. When McCain says he was a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution, part of that was the idea of promoting democracy, building it, and obviously Poland was one of the success stories of what Reagan was trying to do.
In addition to that, I would say that McCain has been pretty forceful in his foreign policy statements about the importance of the Transatlantic relationship. I would say that McCain is certainly the better-known quantity for Poland. And he's known to be an ally of the country.
Given McCain's blunt talk about Vladimir Putin - especially in contrast with Bush's relationship with Putin - how do you see US-Russia relations changing should McCain win?
TO: I obviously don't speak for the McCain campaign, but - based on what he's said and his commitment to democratic values in this region - I think that he would want to be more assertive.
TN: McCain has called for some tough steps against Russia, including its removal from the G8. I think that in McCain the Russians would definitely face a president who was tougher in the relationship. That doesn't mean that the current president hasn't advocated tougher steps, but McCain very much believes in democracy. And he definitely doesn't see Russia as a democratic country or one acting in the interests of democratic countries. I think that in many ways - in whatever ways that he thought he could legitimately pressure Russia - he would do so.
What about 527 groups and negative ads? How can McCain, who has spoken strongly against 527 groups, keep their negative ads under control?
TN: I don't know, actually. It's a very tough thing. The fact is that these groups act independently, McCain can and has and will disavow these groups and tell them not to do it, but once they have money in their bank accounts, they can pretty much do what they want to do.
So there's really no way to control it. He has the ability to say, "please stop." He can tell his supporters to not support these organizations, but that's all he can do as a candidate. As president of the United States, he would have the ability to keep people who have worked with 527 groups out of the administration. But he's limited in his ability to control what some of these groups do.
On the topic of negative ads in general, I think that there's a lot of concern expressed about it but the truth is that most voters are much more responsive to negative information than positive information about candidates. And there are a lot of legitimate points of debate that candidates have to point out to voters. I don't think that doing that is a bad thing for the process.
Voters complain about a lot of things, like negative ads, but they also complain about phone calls and direct mail and every other aspect of the campaign.
Given his stance on the issue, how negative can he go?
TO: John McCain believes in contrasting himself, but there are certain kinds of contrasts which he doesn't like to draw, ones that he believes that are not relevant to the debate. ... I think what you're going to see with McCain is [his campaign] trying to draw a pretty clear contrast between himself and Obama, but Obama will be doing the same thing.
In terms of how that translates into advertising, both sides always have a tendency to say that what the other side is running is negative advertising.
The American presidential election campaign is the longest race for office in the world and its getting longer. Other nations, particularly healthy European democracies, do just fine with campaigns measurable in weeks rather than months - is the US system getting too complicated?
TN: This year it's been an interesting time to watch this debate in the United States. At the beginning of last year there was a lot of concern expressed in the US amongst pundits about the length of the process.
Part of the reason for the length of the process this year was because the current president was very much on his way out the door. Many American voters were ready to make a change, certainly the Democrats wanted a change...
...but wasn't Clinton in a similar situation towards the end of his presidency?
Clinton had high approval ratings. Even though he'd gone through the Monica Lewinsky thing, his approval ratings were still pretty high for what he was doing as president. His personal favorable ratings were low, though. It's really the opposite with the current president. His approval ratings are very low, but his favorable ratings - [based on questions like] "do you think he's a good guy?" - are pretty good.
Anyway, there was a lot of focus on states moving up in the primary process and how the contest was going to be decided very quickly and all that kind of stuff. The truth is that the presidential primary process - the date when the first primary is held - has moved up by about four weeks from what it was in the 1980s. More people have participated in this process on both sides than in the past.
Certainly the Democrats have run a marathon of a race. And even if it's long, what's bad about that?
...um, aren't there other things they could be focusing their attention on? Don't they have senatorial duties to attend to?
They do and, well, they ignore those. (laughter) But I don't see the downside. This year on the Democratic side, their turnout in the primaries has been double what it was in 2004.
I think the decision [on when to start the race] is very arbitrary. Parties can decide to do it very late, they can decide to do it early. It's an arbitrary issue and I don't see a tremendous amount of harm in the process.
The truth is, the presidential race starts the day after the president is elected. (laughter) Truthfully, that's when people start planning and doing their thing. But I view this presidential race as having really started after the 2006 elections. John McCain gave a speech in early December that kind of outlined a conservative vision. Mitt Romney got into the race with an attack during Thanksgiving week in 2006, the first attack in the presidential campaign.
So it started pretty early, but it's hard for me to imagine it starting any earlier than it did. And I don't view it as a problem. A lot of European don't have primaries, for example. I look at the US system and see a system that involves a lot more people in the decision-making process. It's not a perfect system but there's certainly a very full airing of the issues that are of interest and need to be debated.
Terry Nelson is a senior strategist for Senator John McCain's presidential election campaign and a partner of Mercury Public Affairs. He served as the national political director for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign and previously served as John McCain's national campaign manager.
Trygve Olson is a managing director at Mercury Public Affairs. He has worked on the McCain campaign and was the International Republican Institute's country director for Belarus from 2001-2007.
