A good election to lose

Michael Steinberger says a hefty defeat might be the best result for the Republicans

Political parties exist to fight elections, and with the presidential campaign now in its climatic weeks, Republicans are gamely battling to keep the White House. Barack Obama has opened a large, possibly insurmountable lead over John McCain, whose every gambit, not least his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate, has failed amid the relentlessly dire news about the economy. But it is not just McCain who is facing possible humiliation on 4 November; the entire Republican party, weighed down by George Bush and beset with profound internal divisions, may be headed for electoral armageddon. As bleak as the party’s immediate prospects are, the long-term picture looks even worse. Indeed, the theory that the faster they are dispatched to oblivion the sooner they might find their way back suggests that the most propitious outcome for the Republicans at this point would be a crushing, cathartic defeat.

They have unquestionably earned it. The Bush presidency has been a disaster for the country and his party, a point that even many Republicans now concede, if still only sotto voce. Bush’s public statements on Wall Street’s meltdown and the fast-sinking economy have been dreadful even by his sorry standards; his dazed and confused performance sent his approval rating tumbling to a new low of 25 per cent and has pretty well assured that his reputation is beyond rehabilitation. To say that the country wants him gone is putting it gently; Republicans and Democrats may be locked in a bitter campaign, but they are united on one point — Inauguration Day cannot arrive soon enough. Some Republicans must surely regret now that they did not forgive McCain his apostasies eight years ago and instead chose Bush as the party’s standard-bearer in 2000.