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The Campaign Begins to Look More Ordinary

LOS ANGELES -- Let it be known that the old French maxim that the more things change, the more they stay the same applies in the United States as well, at least as one considers this presidential campaign so far.

Despite the babble of more than 20 candidates racing through a speeded-up calendar of primary elections and caucuses, we seem to be just about where we might have been if the slower old rules of spaced primaries and momentum were still in effect. With a few personal touches, some of them quite exciting, the election is developing as a referendum on the failed presidency of George W. Bush.

The Republican nominee, almost certainly Sen. John McCain, began his campaign for the Republican nomination by presenting himself (or pretending to be) the natural party heir to the dynasty of the Bushes, father and son. The strategy failed. There came a day when he had no money and no staff.

So, he went back to being John McCain the straight-talking maverick who often thumbed his nose at the unmoving pomposity of his party and captured the fancy of public and press back in the year 2000. That did seem to work, and he has survived to become the strongest candidate against either of the Democratic diversity duo, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

But there is a problem with that. McCain will have to go back to defending the indefensible, explaining why Americans should reward Bush and his party for taking over the world's only superpower -- economic, military and moral nation -- and in just eight years diminishing us to a hated and mocked stumbling giant that can't win small wars, keep the economy humming and argues the beneficent effects of torture.

The McCain ascension and the ideological partnership of Clinton and Obama mean that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which had been fading from view as the United States economy tottered, may again become the pivotal issue of the general election campaign. Watching the final debates in both parties before the 20-plus state sprint of Super Duper Tuesday demonstrated the difference: Clinton and Obama (and probably most of the nation) want to get out of Iraq, and McCain, improbably, still thinks we can win in those far places.

Still, no matter how inept his party and its bumbling leader come across, McCain, with nothing but personal resources, or character, if you will, is not a dead candidate walking. His musketeer manner appeals to many moderate Democrats -- especially those who do not like Hillary Clinton -- more than it does to conservative Republicans, and almost all Republicans are conservative these days.

Forgetting politics and voting records -- the American Conservative Union rates McCain's voting record 82 percent favorable, compared with 8 percent for both Clinton and Obama -- the Arizona senator has two things going for him. He has a gift for talking differently than he votes and for persuading voters he has a more open mind than most conservatives, and he has the genuine moral authority of his bravery and steadfastness as a tortured prisoner of war for more than five years. Bush Republicans are totally without that kind of respect after using the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as an excuse to make torture, imprisonment without legal recourse, eavesdropping, wire-tapping, systematic lying and other police state techniques part of the American way of life.

Because of his own life story, McCain not only transcends his party's criminal mentality but also has had the courage to say so. He has made the point that what America does to its enemies defines America to both enemies and friends. "One of the things that kept us going when I was in prison in Vietnam," he told The New York Times last November, "is that we knew if the situation were reversed we would not be doing to our captives what they were doing to us."

So, as we head into a very long general election campaign, it may be that after all of the wacky changes in party and state rules that threw this election season into early chaos, we may have ended up where we would have been if we had stuck with the older, slower system of primary elections every couple of weeks for more than five months. So far, the only significant difference is that it has all happened in just five weeks.

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Related Topics: clinton | election 2008 | mccain | obama | romney |

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