McCain’s problem with Bush

With the Republicans convening in the twin cities this week, I thought the blog should focus on what the experts say about the GOP’s chances this November

Rob Kaiser at the Washington Post thinks that McCain has been slightly fortunate in that Hurricane Gustav has blown George Bush’s proposed talk on the first night of the convention off course. Bush, of course, has an approval rating of just 30% and is so unpopular that nine Republican Senators have stayed away from St Paul rather than be associated with the national party.

Then again, Kaiser thinks that McCain has a longer term problem in disassociating himself from the man he has voted in support of 90% of his time in the Senate since 2001.

First, Kaiser establishes the problem:

‘But the president’s decision to stay away from St. Paul this week won’t solve John McCain’s Bush problem. During their convention in Denver, the Democrats made perfectly clear their intention to run against “McSame” and “George W. Bush’s third term.” Republicans in St. Paul can’t hide the fact that they are picking the person they hope will be Bush’s successor.

Back in Washington after Bush took office, McCain flirted with crossing the aisle of the Senate to vote with the Democrats and give them a majority, an idea that died when Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont did just that.

When the Democrats nominated his friend John Kerry as their 2004 standard bearer, McCain seriously considered Kerry’s suggestion that he join the ticket as the candidate for a kind of super vice presidency. McCain decided against it.’

Why Kaiser is of the notion that McCain has a mountain to climb:

‘Robert G. Beckel, who managed Walter F. Mondale’s thoroughly unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1984 and is now a Fox News commentator, summarized the record: Since 1960, candidates running on the ticket of the party that is completing two terms in the White House, hoping to win a third, usually lose. Richard M. Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Al Gore in 2000 are the cases in point. Only George H.W. Bush defied this rule in 1988, in the midst of an economic boom, “but nobody has ever been elected to a third term for the same party in bad economic times,” Beckel noted. “No one’s ever been elected to a third term when you have an unpopular war. And most importantly, no one has been elected to a third term with an unpopular incumbent president. . . . Yet McCain has all three of those problems.”

Political scientists who try to reduce election prognostication to mathematical formulas agree that thanks largely to Bush, McCain’s situation is grim. One is Alan Abramowitz of Emory University, who uses a complex mathematical formula based on the sitting president’s approval rating on July 1 of the election year, the economic growth rate in the second quarter of that year and a “time for a change” factor based on the number of terms the incumbent party has held the White House. This year, Abramowitz’s formula—which has predicted the winner of the popular vote correctly in every election since 1988—says Obama will win easily in November.

So is McCain fated to lose? “As a nation we’re due to break those precedents,” Graham says. “Yes, the dynamics of this race are very much tilted toward the Democratic Party,” partly because the country is eager for change, Graham said in an interview last week, but McCain offers change, too. “With John you can have the best of both worlds. You can have change—John McCain has a long record of doing things that are nontraditional—but you can have change that is safe and secure. . . . We have a good story to tell, that the next four years will be different and better than the last four. . . . The direction that we’ll take the country in is going to be different than Bush and better than Obama.”’