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McCain has let his party restrict him too much

James Forsyth

Sunday, 26th October 2008

No commentator has been as consistently worth reading this election season as David Brooks. His column today sums up how the McCain campaign has failed to match McCain’s record in public life:

“McCain would be an outstanding president. In government, he has almost always had an instinct for the right cause. He has become an experienced legislative craftsman. He is stalwart against the country’s foes and cooperative with its friends. But he never escaped the straightjacket of a party that is ailing and a conservatism that is behind the times. And that’s what makes the final weeks of this campaign so unspeakably sad.”

The Republican party nominated McCain in large part because he was a different kind of Republican, a Republican who had a chance after two terms of Bush. But in the general the party has been deeply reluctant to let McCain run as a different kind of Republican and McCain hasn’t tried to craft a new message for the GOP. I still think McCain has the potential to be a genuinely great president but McCain’s reform instincts have not been placed as front and centre as they should have been during this campaign.

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derek

October 26th, 2008 11:15pm

James, McCain may have been a good Pres ten years ago. Not now. He is past it. Come on. Join us in the present and the future. Stop leaning on your right foot because of that pebble in the left shoe that you should have removed ages ago.

THX1138

October 26th, 2008 11:26pm

It's always someone else's fault.

"McCain has the potential to be a genuinely great president but McCain"

On what evidence? He was a crap candidate and he would have been a crap President.

It all over now even Rove says so

John McCain has a "very steep hill to climb" to win the election, former White House adviser Karl Rove told "Fox News Sunday."

Now we can watch the GOP tear themselves apart and end up us a minority christian wingnut party and out of power for a generation.

Ganpat Ram

October 26th, 2008 11:43pm

To put it all much more simply, McCain, incredibly given his previous record, was fool enough to run a rightwing campaign in the mother of all leftwing years.

His political imagination failed him when he most needed it. He could have transformed the Republican Party, weaned it rudely from its cussed reactionary prejudices, got it ready for an epic battle, while Obama was slugging it out with Clinton all those months. Instead, Mccain slipped comfortably into old-style Republicanism and is being thrashed to hell.