ST. PAUL — The Republicans may not have held much of a
convention so far, but they still know how to put on a show. As
thousands protested in the streets, the Palins announced the latest addition to their family,
and the GOP turned its national convention into a Jerry Lewis-style
telethon for the victims of Hurricane Gustav, John McCain’s party
began its transition into the post-Bush era.
Although Laura Bush and Cindy McCain addressed the opening
session, speeches by President George W. Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney were the storm’s first casualties. But the new titular
head of the Republican Party probably doesn’t mind: while McCain is
locked in a tight race against Barack Obama, the president’s
approval ratings have been stuck in the 30s — ever since the last
time a hurricane hit New Orleans.
The biggest — only? — argument the Democrats made in Denver
was that McCain represented another four years of Bush. If voters
want to turn the page on the Bush economy, Bush’s war, and the
red-blue political divisions that have dominated the Bush years,
Obama is the only alternative. While the Bush-McCain linkage might
not be as self-evident to swing voters as the Democratic base, it
is too close for the new Republican nominee’s comfort.
In some ways, it is unfair that this is how the GOP faithful
will bid Bush farewell. More than any recent Republican president,
including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, he and his aides were
actively involved in party-building. The Bush White House helped
recruit top-shelf candidates for Senate seats in South Dakota,
Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, Florida, and North Carolina when some
of those Republicans would have preferred to run for other offices.
These efforts paved for way for the Republican pickups in the 2002
and 2004 elections.
Bush was generous with his time and his coattails in the red
states, making frequent campaign swings and fundraising stops.
Meanwhile, Karl Rove saw himself not just as the president’s chief
political adviser but as the Mark Hanna of his generation — the
architect of an enduring Republican majority. After Bush was
reelected, Democrats went into mourning and began to question
whether they could win national elections again without undergoing
major changes.
How quickly things change. Two years later, the Republicans were
in the doldrums and that perpetually emerging Democratic majority
seemed in sight for the first time since 1968. Having reached
parity with the Democrats, Republican identification among the
voters tumbled to pre-Reagan levels — exactly where the Democratic
presidential ticket now pledges to raise taxes and regulations.
Bush went from majority-maker to majority-breaker in one short
election cycle.
McCain’s nomination happened more by accident than by design, as
a number of “if’s” show: If Rudy Giuliani had been willing to
glad-handle in New Hampshire, if Fred Thompson had run less of a
celebrity campaign, if Mike Huckabee had never risen and Mitt
Romney had won the Iowa caucuses, it is hard to imagine the Arizona
senator ever recovering from his 2007 near-meltdown. But he was
still the right candidate for the post-Bush moment. Popular with
independents, inclined to pick high-profile fights with the White
House, and willing to buck his party, McCain could transcend the
battered Republican brand.
That also accounts for his continuing problems with the
conservative base. They remember McCain and Bush siding against
them on many issues — the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill, the
McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, No Child Left Behind,
and they stopped just short of coming together on McCain-Lieberman
cap-and-trade approach to climate change. But McCain was first on
the surge, on earmark reform, on offsetting Katrina relief, and,
however flawed his motives, the Medicare prescription drug benefit,
even if Bush was the conservative standard-bearer on tax cuts and
Guantanamo Bay.
If the Republican convention can resume as normal no later than
Wednesday, McCain will get his chance to re-brand the party in his
image. For good and for ill, the Republicans can watch the Bush
years blow away.
