Frank Rich's column this week takes on John McCain adviser Charlie Black's comments that a terrorist attack would be a "big advantage" for the Republican candidate's campaign. While much has been said about how Black's comments mirror ones McCain made last year (even though McCain repudiated Black's statement this week), Rich goes further to show how the McCain campaign's dependence on the fear of a terrorist attack is a structural part of the Republican campaign. In this sense, Rich argues, McCain is relying (like all Republicans this century) upon the ideas and tactics of Karl Rove.
Though Rove's politics of fear (fear of a terrorist attack and fear of gay marriage being the two fears Rich specifically raises) succeeded in 2002 and 2004, they failed in 2006. Rich argues that these tactics stand little chance of succeeding in 2008.
If a terrorist bomb did detonate in an American city before Election Day, would that automatically be to the Republican ticket’s benefit?
Not necessarily. Some might instead ask why the Bush White House didn’t replace Michael Chertoff as secretary of homeland security after a House report condemned his bungling of Katrina. The man didn’t know what was happening in the New Orleans Convention Center even when it was broadcast on national television.
Next, voters might take a hard look at the antiterrorism warriors of the McCain campaign (and of a potential McCain administration). This is the band of advisers and surrogates that surfaced to attack Mr. Obama two weeks ago for being "naïve" and "delusional" and guilty of a "Sept. 10th mind-set" after he had the gall to agree with the Supreme Court decision on Gitmo detainees. The McCain team’s track record is hardly sterling. It might make America more vulnerable to terrorist attack, not less, were it in power.
Rich goes on to list the foibles of several of McCain's team, including ex-CIA head James Woolsey, neocon Randy Scheunemann and (because you cannot use a noun, a verb, and 9/11 without him) Rudy Guiliani. Read the column for details, but the sense Rich gives is these men should not make the American people feel safer, least of all at a time when we are more afraid of losing our jobs, homes and savings.
Yet Rich can hardly blame McCain for "clinging to terrorism as a political crutch." Gay-bashing doesn't look like it will work, the fundamentalists don't much like McCain, and Rove's ham-handed smears of Barack Obama do not appear to be gaining much traction. Instead, Rich concludes, they amount to the old politics of the past, a politics already refuted in 2006, and not likely to help McCain in the months ahead.
It would be unfair to use more quotes from Rich's column, tasty though they may be. Instead, I urge you to go read the whole thing, as it makes a persuasive case for why McCain is in trouble even if his family pays their taxes.