Sen. John McCain greets the crowd in Memphis Friday, April 4, 2008 (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer.)
by Frank James
Perhaps being shot down over enemy territory and spending years as a prisoner of war makes Sen. John McCain less intimidated than other politicians at the thought of speaking to unfriendly audiences. After all, what’s a little heckling after you’ve endured years of North Vietnamese tormenters.
That thought crossed my mind as I watched McCain speak last week in Memphis to an African-American crowd gathered outside the Lorraine Motel, the site of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’.s 1968 assassination.
The venue was certainly well beyond the typical suburban comfort zone of Republican presidential candidates. And it was especially hot spot for McCain who voted against the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, a historic fact that drew boos from some in the audience when he mentioned it.
But there he was.
And as John Dickerson of Slate writes, it’s part of a McCain campaign strategy that will find him visiting inner city and poor rural areas, places Republicans usually write off as too Democratic to waste precious campaign time in. As Dickerson writes:
That all makes sense. McCain has been really flat and has almost seemed sedated during his big policy speeches. The fewer of those speeches he has to give, the better.
By contrast, two qualities McCain’s campaign will be able to highlight by having McCain pop up before audiences of black, brown and low-income people is their candidate’s courage and penchant for risk-taking.
It unquestionably takes courage to face a hostile audience which will contain some members intent on either embarrassing or discomfiting a presidential candidate.
But it also allows McCain to show himself as willing to roll the dice. Risk-taking is generally not something one associates with septuagenerians. It’s an indication that, even at his age, McCain is willing to take chances and act with a boldness usually more associated with more youthful men.
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In this respect, McCain appears to be acting like the younger candidate while Sen. Barack Obama campaigns with a caution that one would expect from the older candidate.
Dickerson makes the point a little differently, that the McCain campaign wants to contrast Obama’s words with the Arizona senator’s deeds, that while Obama talks about conducting a different kind of politics, McCain is actually do it.
The McCain tour also aims to draw a contrast with Barack Obama. (They already assume he’s going to win the nomination.) The GOP’s attack will boil down to the accusation that Obama is a big phony. The Democrat gives them an opening: Obama talks about how he goes in front of hostile audiences, but he doesn’t really do it much. He heralds his bipartisan appeal and talent for bringing people together, but his track record on these fronts is thin. He talks about how his administration will put its negotiations over policy on C-SPAN, but he has run a conventionally conservative campaign, keeping press access relatively low. When his top economic aide (and former Slate contributor), Austan Goolsbee, got into trouble, the campaign hid him under a bushel rather than offering him to reporters to answer questions. “Obama talks about doing these things,” says a McCain aide, “he just doesn’t do them.” With big acts of accessibility and reaching out beyond his party ranks, McCain hopes to show as well as tell that Obama’s promises to do the same are empty.
The Obama campaign can rightly say that their candidate has indeed taken his message into traditionally Republican states like Wyoming and Kansas as he has added to his delegate count through his no-state-left-behind strategy.
But Obama has spoken to Democrats, independents and Obama-leaning Republicans –Obamacans–in such places. He hasn’t talked to audiences with a lot of hostile people in him. Part of that is because he’s still trying to win his party’s nomination. He doesn’t have the luxury McCain has right now as the last candidate standing in his party.
Should Obama become the Democratic nominee, it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s challenged by McCain’s campaign to play not just home games, but away games too. As an avowed basketball fan, that’s something Obama can surely relate to.