The post-mortems are already beginning on John McCain’s campaign. There is plenty for folk to get stuck into—the lack of a domestic policy message, the Palin pick, the failure to distance from Bush until so late in the campaign—but McCain is trailing principally because he is a national security candidate in what has turned into an almost exclusively economic election.
As Steve Hayes notes, back in 2007 the most important issue in picking a president for both Republicans and Democrats were national security related—terrorism for Republicans, Iraq for Democrats. Now only nine percent cite terrorism and seven percent Iraq as their top issue while 57 percent name the economy. This isn’t surprising given recent events but it does make it extremely hard for McCain to breakthrough. His greatest strength as a candidate is national security, something that his war hero biography reinforces.
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