The Battle for America 2008

by Haynes Johnson

  In almost every other way, however, events were conspiring in McCain’s favor. Romney, focused on Michigan, cut back his spending in South Carolina, where he was the only candidate with money enough to run a negative campaign against McCain. Huckabee inexplicably decided to compete actively in Michigan instead of going straight to South Carolina. “We spent precious time and resources in Michigan,” Chip Saltsman said later. Huckabee’s detour to Michigan gave Fred Thompson an opening for one last stand in South Carolina. Giuliani, meanwhile, continued to sink into obscurity.

  The Republican dynamic was strikingly different than that of the Democratic race, which had quickly devolved to a fierce two-person contest between Clinton and Obama and a succession of head-to-head, state-by-state contests. The Republican race reflected the continuing sense of fragmentation within the party, with a series of contests in which the main competitors varied week by week and gamesmanship became an important element in each candidate’s strategy.

  After three contests, the Republicans now had three winners. McCain was in a stronger position than any of the others, but still a precarious front-runner. Victory in South Carolina was critical for him, but at least he was now in a better position than the other candidates. Had one of his opponents been able to beat him in South Carolina, as Bush had done eight years earlier, his hopes for the nomination might again have vanished. Instead, his rivals were more worried about their ability to survive to compete in Florida and the Super Tuesday states than in slowing McCain before he gained unstoppable momentum.

  South Carolina was an emotionally fraught contest. McCain remained scarred by what had happened to him there eight years ago; Cindy McCain even more so because of the scurrilous attacks on their adopted daughter from Bangladesh. The day of the primary, ice and snow coated parts of the state. Early in the evening, as McCain awaited the returns with a coterie of advisers, his team was alerted that the Associated Press was about to call the race for him. Then nothing happened. The vote showed a tight race, with McCain narrowly trailing Huckabee; some counties had ballot problems that delayed returns. McCain appeared tense as he watched the numbers come in, saying little to his advisers. Finally a pattern emerged: Huckabee was underperforming in the upstate region around Greenville and Spartanburg, where the religious conservative vote was especially strong; McCain was getting his share, and Thompson was clearly helping hold down Huckabee’s vote. Meanwhile, McCain was rolling up big margins in the more moderate coastal counties.

  When Horry County finally reported a big McCain margin, it was over. McCain had edged Huckabee by three points, 33 percent to 30 percent. Thompson, with 16 percent, had drained enough votes from Huckabee to keep him from winning. McCain is given to few public displays of emotion, but those who know him best could see how this victory affected him. Not only had it compensated for his 2000 defeat, but it also proved to him and to all the doubters who had declared his candidacy dead six months earlier that he was tougher, more resilient, and more dogged than all the rest of his rivals.

  In his victory speech, he told a cheering crowd, “It took us a while, but what’s eight years among friends?” He smiled widely. “I am aware that for the last twenty-eight years, the winner of the South Carolina primary has been the nominee of our party,” he said. “We have a ways to go, of course. There are some tough contests ahead, starting tomorrow in the state of Florida. But, my friends, we are well on our way tonight.”

  McCain was again the front-runner, but not in the classic sense. He had won the two most important primaries to date, but had yet to prove he was the clear choice of Republican voters. Without the Independent vote, neither victory would have been assured. He was doing no better than splitting the Republican vote with his closest competitor. The exit polls showed that he was the candidate of the disgruntled: He was winning voters who were least likely to approve of Bush’s performance, least happy with the war in Iraq, and most pessimistic about the economy. Though he was on a path to winning the nomination, McCain still had to prove his conservative credentials.

  The Republican race now moved to Florida for the decisive primary. McCain was in the strongest position, but he needed to ratify his South Carolina success—and Florida’s primary, unlike those in New Hampshire and South Carolina, was closed to Independents.

  Giuliani’s late-state strategy had backfired. In New Hampshire, Michigan, and South Carolina, he had finished sixth, fourth, and sixth. “What has happened to your candidacy?” NBC anchor Brian Williams asked him at a debate in Boca Raton on January 24, five days before the primary. “I believe that I’m going to have the same faith that the New York Giants had last week [in their Super Bowl victory] and we’re going to come from behind and surprise everyone,” he gamely replied. “We have them all lulled into a very false sense of security now.” The audience laughed, but it was an empty show of bravado. He was sinking, to the dismay of Romney’s advisers. Romney needed a healthy Giuliani to maintain his hopes of winning Florida. Because McCain and Giuliani still appealed to many of the same voters, a Giuliani collapse would open up a part of the electorate for McCain that Romney likely couldn’t get.

  Romney poured money and energy into Florida and focused his message on the economy in a state devastated by the subprime mortgage crisis. Less than a week before the primary, he had climbed into a tie with McCain in private tracking polls. The longer the campaign stayed on economic issues, the better it was for Romney. McCain decided to force the debate back to Iraq and national security. Earlier in the year, Romney had made a fuzzy statement suggesting that the military prepare “a private timetable” for troop presence in Iraq. Charlie Black told us later, “Salter and I both had literally been carrying the thing around in our pocket for months waiting for a spot to use it. We needed to change the subject, so that’s what we did that Saturday morning before the primary, and of course, he took the bait.”

  On January 26, at a rally in Fort Myers, McCain blistered Romney. “If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do, then there will be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher,” he said. It was a questionable charge based on flimsy evidence, but it created the diversion McCain wanted. Romney’s team foolishly took the bait. Romney called the attack dishonest and demanded an apology. McCain responded, “The apology is owed to the young men and women serving this nation in uniform.”

  McCain won two decisive endorsements in the final days, first from Senator Mel Martinez and then from Governor Charlie Crist. Martinez had given clear indications he would remain neutral, so his endorsement stung the Romney team. Crist had once pledged his support to Giuliani, then seemed resigned to remaining neutral. His last-minute support for McCain came unexpectedly, and without any warning to either the Giuliani or Romney campaigns.

  The endorsements and McCain’s attack on Romney over an Iraq timetable stopped Romney’s surge. McCain’s victory in Florida provided the momentum that carried him to the nomination. Giuliani immediately dropped out, flew to California, and endorsed McCain. He never looked happier than in announcing his support for his friend. McCain still had to weather Super Tuesday and a challenge from Romney in California. Two days after Super Tuesday, Romney quit the race and endorsed McCain. McCain clinched the nomination on March 4 with victories in Ohio and Texas. Huckabee, who had refused to quit to the annoyance of McCain’s advisers, then ended his candidacy.

  Against all odds, McCain was now the leader of the Republican Party. But it was still a demoralized and disgruntled party. His victory marked the triumph of his singular personality, and that alone was one of the most remarkable achievements of the 2008 campaign. But it was not one that, by itself, reunified his party, nor necessarily made the country feel better about Republican leadership. Conservatives still viewed him with suspicion—Rush Limbaugh continued to attack him and Ann Coulter said she would vote for Hillary over McCain. When McCain had been introduced at the CP
AC conference after Super Tuesday, he was roundly booed.

  On March 5th, McCain went to the White House to receive Bush’s endorsement, a symbolic passing of the torch between the two rivals. The punctual president was in a jovial mood and did a little soft-shoe dance for reporters as he waited on the steps of the North Portico for the late-arriving McCain. McCain thanked the president for his support. The president, who remained a huge drag on Republican hopes in November, said he would help in any way he could. “If my showing up and endorsing him helps him, or if I’m against him and it helps him, either way, I want him to win,” he said. McCain said he would welcome the president on the campaign trail. “I intend to have as much possible campaigning events together as is in keeping with the president’s heavy schedule.”

  Bush and McCain went inside for a celebratory lunch of hot dogs. It was the last time the two appeared in public together for the rest of the campaign.

  BOOK FIVE

  THE ELECTION

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  America: Decision Time

  Asked to raise their hands if they thought Obama was a Muslim, seven of twelve Independent voters did.

  —From a Peter Hart focus group three months before the Democratic convention

  More than a year had passed since Peter Hart convened his first group of voters. Now, as the primaries were ending late in May, the politics of 2008 had become even more uncertain.

  Barack Obama already had made history by defeating Hillary Clinton. He was on his way to nomination by the Democrats in Denver at the end of August, backed by a passionate band of supporters. His problem, as Hart concluded after listening to voters composed entirely of Independents, was that while Obama’s supporters were shouting, “Yes, We Can!” others were increasingly asking, “Who Are You?”

  These doubts among Independent voters presented Obama with a challenge as daunting as his primary battle with Clinton. Based on what these Independents were saying, Obama had largely been defined by his controversial association with Reverend Wright and by what they believed about his personal background. That made them uneasy about him and uncertain as to what kind of president he would be.

  Obama faced two great tests as he turned toward the general election against John McCain: First, he had to define the stakes that faced the nation in 2008; but second, and more important, he had to introduce himself convincingly to a larger number of American voters, particularly to those Independents who were crucial to the election of a president. And McCain had always done well with such voters. Hart had assembled twelve voters for his Charlottesville, Virginia, session: six men and six women, ranging in age from twenty-four to seventy-two. Eleven were white and seven of the twelve had voted for George W. Bush in 2004. Though none of them had voted in either the Republican or Democratic primaries, they all were certain they would vote in November.

  Obama had a long way to go to reassure them. Their concerns were not about his policy proposals but rather arose from their limited, often shocking misinformation about him—who he was, where he came from, what his values were. Even among those who were attracted by his message and personality, the negative images of an angry Jeremiah Wright shouting, “God damn America!” were engraved in their minds as a symbol of the campaign.

  Asked to recall any two memories of the campaign, seven of the twelve voters cited Wright by name. One said Obama’s catchphrase was “change,” but “it also means that [Obama] changed his mind about Reverend Wright, because at first he was very much defending the man, but then after he saw that public opinion was going against Reverend Wright, all of a sudden now it’s like ‘Oh, yeah, he’s a bad person.’”

  Their discussion became “truly chilling,” as Hart later put it, when they elaborated on what they understood to be Obama’s background. One voter said Obama “is Muslim.” No one contradicted him. Someone else mentioned Obama’s “Muslim background”—again without protest or qualification from the others. When asked to raise their hands if they thought Obama was a Muslim, seven of the twelve voters did, including two who were supporting him over McCain. One voter had heard something about Obama and the Pledge of Allegiance. Another believed he had placed his hand on the Koran when he was sworn in as a senator. “He is representing a minority in more than one case,” a male voter said. “He is African-American and he is Muslim. And in light of that, . . . it does feel like we’re being judged or pounded on because we want to carry a gun or we want to wear the American flag pin.” Another voiced her uncertainty. “I’m a little concerned,” she said. “I don’t know enough about his Muslim background and their beliefs and how he views everything. I need to check into his background.”

  These voters all wanted change, passionately. As Hart said, the word was first and foremost in everyone’s thoughts, regardless of political views or ideology. They were even angrier about America’s condition and direction than those in Hart’s focus groups during 2007. Their quick characterizations of the state of the nation were uniformly negative, even despairing:

  “Declining.”

  “Depressing.”

  “In the toilet.”

  “Downslide.”

  They were equally scathing when they talked about the economy. Rising gas prices, food prices, the housing market—all created a feeling that things were dangerously out of control, and getting worse. Heightening their bleak mood was their harsh assessment of George W. Bush’s presidency:

  “Worthless.”

  “Misleading.”

  “Disappointed.”

  “Misinformed.”

  “Warmonger.”

  “Gullible.”

  “Expected more.”

  “Not very smart.”

  And three-fourths of them had voted for Bush the last time! These attitudes were more than a snapshot of a carefully selected, if small and unscientific, demographic group. They matched the latest national opinion surveys revealing overwhelmingly negative feelings about the state of the nation and the performance of the president. At that point, 85 percent of voters believed the country was headed seriously in the wrong direction, while Bush’s favorability rating was at an all-time low.

  The Charlottesville Independents were split: half for Obama, half for McCain. They were doubtful about Obama, worried he might be too “soft-minded” or too “gullible” to lead America in a time of trouble. But they were even more doubtful about John McCain. Though they respected his military record and political experience, many of them believed he was tied too closely to the Bush administration’s record, making his presidency “a third Bush term.” McCain had another problem: in the year since Hart began his series of focus groups, McCain’s standing among voters had neither broadened nor improved. Thus November’s presidential election was shaping up as a choice between the uncertainty of a Barack Obama presidency and the undesirability of a John McCain one.

  In that test, Obama had the edge. Given the choice between a change candidate and one seen as status quo, voters of all political backgrounds were signaling they wanted change. Three of every four voters were telling national pollsters they wanted a president who would take the country in a direction different from Bush. Seven in ten thought McCain would take them in the same direction as Bush. This presented an exceedingly difficult challenge for McCain, and a great opportunity for Obama—but only if he reassured Americans about who he was, what he stood for, and removed many of the doubts that still surrounded him. That required Obama to deal with the way voters felt about such complex issues as race and religion and, as Hart said, “most fundamentally, comfort” about himself. He had to persuade voters to take a chance for change and gather behind him to unite the country. In Hart’s analogy, it was for Obama like the children’s game of chutes and ladders. As he climbed the ladder to a new plateau, there was a new chute that sent him back to the beginning.

  Obama understood the problem. In a midsummer interview, he told us, “With change comes some risk, and I combine two things. One is an insistence that we
move in a new direction, which takes some time for people to process. . . . The other thing is that my biography involves a pretty significant change that takes time for people to process. And it’s not just the issue of race. I think it’s much more the fact that I haven’t been on the national scene. . . . They’re going to keep their powder dry and get as much information as they can the next three months, without leaping into it, but [I think] that ultimately when they compare my policy agenda to John McCain’s, when they conclude that I can execute on that policy agenda, I think we’ll be in good shape.”

  For Hillary Clinton, the endless primaries had decisively clarified the way voters felt about her candidacy. Among voters we tracked over those months, attitudes of three of them explained why her presidential attempt had failed after such high expectations.

  Fay Citerone was the IT professional we had been following since that first Hart focus group more than a year before. At that time Citerone, a liberal Democrat, was leaning toward Hillary, but had doubts. Clinton struck her as “shrill.” Obama was intriguing, but still, as she put it, “a question mark.” Citerone was paying close attention to the campaign, believed it “extremely important” because as a country “we just have a lot of repairs to make.” But she also said of McCain’s candidacy, “I have lots of respect for him. He seems very authentic. I don’t think it’s just because of his POW experience. He comes off as very intelligent and thoughtful, a straightforward sort of person.” She could see him as president.

  She was following the campaign even more avidly when we spoke again months later. “This has been a fascinating political season,” she said. “I’m trying to think about any other presidential campaign like this one. Four years ago, none of the candidates, Democrat or Republican, made you think, ‘Gee, I want to go to the polls and vote.’ This time it’s so different.” It made her presidential choice even more difficult.