Bill Gallagher: McCain's Exit from Michigan Highlights His Failures

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Bill Gallagher

Detroit -- John McCain does get it. The election is about judgment. On the defining issues for the presidential candidates -- America's role in the world, the economy and the selection of a vice presidential candidate, voters, particularity those previously undecided, are now concluding they don't trust McCain's judgment.

That trend is most evident here in Michigan -- a state the Republicans said was critical for victory in November. Yet, last week, the McCain campaign abruptly surrendered, effectively ceding 17 electoral votes to Obama.

Just a couple of months ago, McCain decided to put his message and judgment on the line with nine campaign stops in the state after he wrapped up the nomination in April. He spent $7.9 million on TV ads. Underscoring the importance of the state, McCain set up his Midwest headquarters in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

McCain was everywhere on the tube claiming he alone could lead the nation to the economic promised land reached by ending the manna of Congressional earmarks. His experience as a POW in Vietnam shaped him as the only man who can assure "victory" in Iraq and protect us in from terrorists.

The Republicans were licking their chops. Michigan was in play. "Barack Obama has had trouble getting traction in the Wolverine State," Nate Silver wrote in The New Republic. Silver, like many other pundits, is locked in the thinking of the 20th century.

They still focused on Macomb County, the conventional bellwether of the state, the home of the Reagan Democrats. National pollsters and political analysts have studied ad naseum the blue collar and nominally Democratic suburban area northeast of Detroit where Ronald Reagan racked up huge majorities and other Republicans candidates have done well since.

The residents of Macomb County are often stereotyped as beer swilling, gun loving hunters, social conservatives unlikely to ever support an African-American candidate for president -- the dubious but persistent political prognosis often found in the mainstream media.

John McCain and Sarah Palin made their first post-convention appearance in Macomb County. They drew a huge, enthusiastic crowd, which included many retired autoworkers, NRA members and just plain god-fearing folks, Catholics and evangelicals alike.

Last month, fortified with Macomb County political grog, the Republicans were giddy over their prospects in Michigan and they figured they had other help from the Democrats.

Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 8.9% and the bleak statistic grows as the auto companies bleed rivers of red ink struggling to survive. Foreclosures are rampant now hitting one in every 20 homes in the state.

Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm's approval ratings have sunk to a Bushian 20%. Kwame Kilpatrick, the crooked, now jail-bound, former Detroit mayor was an ongoing embarrassment and national joke. An inept troupe of clowns runs the Michigan Democratic Party.

McCain saturated the airwaves with ads touting his stance against earmarks and how that brave posture will revive the economy. Other spots had Obama ignoring the brilliance of the surge in Iraq and McCain was portrayed as the great military mind with the will and experience to win the war.

In Macomb County, one of those son-of-SwiftBoaters groups ran an ad where Obama is heard praising Kilpatrick long before his criminal troubles were known. Rousing the rednecks and religious right, spiced with race, would bring rapture to the Republicans in November -- or so they thought.

Obama stood his ground, spending $7.5 million on TV ads and his campaign made major thrusts into Oakland County, the center of wealth in Michigan. The Republican bliss in the swampy fields of Macomb County didn't phase the Obama campaign. They had their sights on more valuable crops.

Time Magazine's Amy Sullivan had a keen eye on the state's political landscape in a piece she wrote in late July. "The battle for Michigan is coming down to leafy, affluent Oakland County, a once solidly Republican bastion that has grown more Democratic in recent years," Sullivan wrote.

Recognizing the real bellwether, Sullivan noted, "Oakland is one of the new battlegrounds of 2008 -- a handful of counties that weren't pivotal a decade ago but are where the election will be lost or won this year. Though nearby Macomb County gave rise to the Reagan Republicans nearly 30 years ago, it is the more upscale Oakland that holds the key to Michigan now."

Obama found the keys to that kingdom striking at McCain's economic policies, his plan to tax health care benefits, his open-ended commitment to keep spending $10 billion dollars a month in Iraq and his inescapable entwinement with George W. Bush.

Obama's message resonated and one recent poll gave him a 13-point edge statewide and the lead in Oakland County. Obama's policy and political judgments drove McCain out of Michigan.

McCain's campaign departure, however, was curious both in timing and manner. Usually campaigns based on their internal polling will see the handwriting on the wall but gradually withdraw to save face, keeping up the morale of the faithful while never acknowledging certain defeat. Keep hope alive.

Not McCain. His campaign announced the surrender, cancelled TV spots and campaign appearances and left the Democrats shocked and the Republicans livid. "I don't know what McCain was thinking," a fuming L. Brooks Patterson, the Oakland County executive and long time Michigan Republican party chieftain told the Detroit Free Press. "He's a general who left the battlefield in the middle of the fight." Ouch!

Patterson knows what leader McCain's unconditional surrender and rapid retreat from Michigan could mean for local Republicans, especially in two very tight Congressional races. "I'm disappointed in his behavior; he's thrown a lot of good Republicans under the bus," Patterson lamented, "If 20,000 people stay home in Michigan on Election Day because our commander has raised the white flag, that could change a lot of races."

Beyond the ludicrous, the last McCain ad still on the air here is one from the Republican National Committee denounced Obama for supporting the $700 billion federal bailout of Wall Street financial markets. McCain, too, voted for the measure.

In the debate this week and beyond, McCain will keep trumpeting the troop surge as the key to pacification in Iraq. In fact, the reduction of violence there hinges on sectarian segregation and political accommodations rather than the size of the army of occupation.

Patrick Cockburn of Britain's The Independent, the most experienced Western reporter in Iraq recently wrote, "As American commander in Iraq General Petraeus' main asset was his astute sense of Iraqi politics rather than any new military strategy." Cockburn reports at the end of the Bush presidency, 138,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq, a "higher figure than the number in Iraq before the surge."

McCain clings to the ridiculous notion that the Iraq war was a good idea. Cockburn has better judgment: "General Petraeus's oft declared uncertainty about future stability in Iraq is genuine. It is the Iraqi Shia and their Iranian backers, not the Americans, who are the true victors in the Iraqi war."

McCain's anecdote for the ailing economy is absurd. In the face of 160,000 jobs lost in September, the worst month in 5 years and 760,000 jobs lost so far this year, the Republican candidate talks about tax cuts and miniscule spending cuts.

When the bleak job figures came out, McCain issued a statement, admitting finally that the "our nation's economy is on the wrong track" (two weeks after he said the "fundamentals of the economy are strong") and offered his prescription. "I will reverse out-of-control spending, end the wasteful and corrupting practice of earmarks, and get the budget back in balance," McCain promised.

Incredibly, he also claims he can do that while cutting taxes by an estimated $3.3 trillion. Last week, the national debt topped $10 trillion, the result of the Republican's disastrous borrow-and-spend policies. Even former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has belatedly shown some responsibility. "I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," he told Bloomfield Television.

McCain carps incessantly about earmarks and pretends eliminating them will offset the cost of his proposed tax cuts. All earmarks together, amount to less than ½ of 1 percent of federal spending. Captain McCain wants to fix the leaky tap in the galley of the fiscal ship of state while he ignores the gapping hole in the bow. How's that for sound judgment?

Sarah Palin remains the poster child for John McCain's failed judgment. The Alaska Governor survived the vice presidential debate by ignoring the questions and responding with every inane bromide drilled into her head.

She came off as peppy and personable as well as just plain goofy, spouting canned gibberish. Palin mugged for the camera and winked like a barfly at a Wasilla watering hole after downing a six-pack of Busch Light.

People who believe Sarah Palin is fit to become president of the United States fall into only two categories: Kool-Aid sipping, blind partisans marching in lock step with anything Karl Rove designs and fools.

The Republicans are desperate as the economy tanks. The pitiful Palin now says Obama is "unfit" to be commander-in-chief and claims he was "palling around with terrorists."

The remainder of their campaign will be nothing but personal attacks on Obama and predictable fear mongering. John McCain's derailed his Straight Talk Express, now choosing to ride the dark politics of slurs and lies to his impending political demise.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION 

Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city council member who works as a television reporter in Detroit. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@aol.com.

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