Meanwhile, the Republicans produced candidates like Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York; Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts; and Arizona senator (and war hero) John McCain. But early front-runner Giuliani sank under rumors and gossip surrounding his three marriages (one of them to his first cousin). And Mitt Romney never overcame the fact that, as one writer put it, he “came off as a phony even when he was perfectly sincere.” This left McCain, rehabilitated after his lynching by Bush forces in the 2000 primary. McCain secured the nomination easily, despite (or because of) such gaffes as singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ classic “Barbara Ann” during a campaign stop in South Carolina.
The Democrats would experience the most protracted and hard-fought primary battle of their party’s history. In the Iowa caucus, Hillary placed third behind Barack Obama and John Edwards (the latter not yet been derailed by charges that he had sired a love child with a videographer hired by his campaign). Hillary fought back to win the New Hampshire primary by two points. After February 5—a.k.a. Super Tuesday, when 23 states held their primaries—Hillary and Obama ended up in a virtual tie and things started to get nasty. The Clinton campaign released a commercial that showed children sleeping peacefully while an ominous voice-over narrator asked, “There’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. Who do you want answering the phone?” It was a scare tactic that harkened back to 1964’s Lyndon Johnson–Barry Goldwater smearfest. For his part, Obama was pilloried for telling an increasingly dour Hillary during one debate that she was “likeable enough.” The primary fight was a divisive one, with old-line Democrats rallying behind Hillary Clinton (except for a few major Democratic powers like Senator Teddy Kennedy and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, the latter of whom was called a “Judas” by Democratic activist James Carville) while, younger Democrats and African Americans lined up behind Obama as a candidate of change. By June of 2008, the exhausting primary battle—which Obama likened to “a great movie that’s gone on about half an hour too long”—was settled. Barack Obama had become the first African American to receive a major party’s nomination for president of the United States. He would face John McCain in what promised to be a long and bruising campaign.
THE CANDIDATES
DEMOCRAT: BARACK OBAMA Barack Hussein Obama was one of the most unlikely presidential candidates in United States history—and not just because his name echoed two of American’s sworn enemies, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, Obama was born in Hawaii and raised partly in Indonesia. He had brushes with drugs (marijuana and cocaine) before heading off to Occidental College in California, followed by Columbia University and eventually Harvard Law School, where he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. A career as a community organizer in Chicago was followed by one as a civil rights attorney, Illinois state senator, and, finally, in 2004, United States senator. Obama was smooth, hip, and capable of seeming both cerebral and passionate—but he was a cipher to many Americans, some of whom found his mixed parentage and exotic childhood threatening. For his running mate he chose Joe Biden, even though many Democrats wanted Hillary Clinton in the vice-presidential slot. As Biden himself said, in his inimitable way: “Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly, [she] might have been a better pick.”
REPUBLICAN: JOHN MCCAIN Born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 (making this the first presidential campaign in which both major party candidates were born outside of the continental United States), Senator John McCain was seventy-two years old in 2008, twenty-five years older than his opponent. His journey to the nomination was as traditional as Obama’s was untraditional. McCain was the son and grandson of four-star Navy admirals, a wild young man who graduated near the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy before being assigned as a Skyhawk pilot flying missions over North Vietnam. He was shot down over Hanoi in 1967 and spent five and a half years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison, where his captors savagely tortured him. After being released in 1973 with permanent physical damage—he was unable to lift his arms above his head—he eventually embarked on a career in politics as a Republican congressman from Arizona. He won the former Senate seat of Barry Goldwater in 1986 and soon became a national figure—a quick-tongued, mercurial, self-styled “maverick” who was perhaps a little further to the left than his party’s right-wing base would have liked, but who polled well with moderates and independents. He survived some of the nastiest politicking in the modern history of campaigning—George W. Bush and Karl Rove’s sleazy attacks on his character and morals in the South Carolina primary of 2000—but as the 2008 campaign reached its zenith, the question became: Would he survive his choice of a running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the most controversial vice-presidential pick in American history?
THE CAMPAIGN
As with many other presidential campaigns—Clinton vs. Bush, Kennedy vs. Nixon—the 2008 campaign became a contest of experience (McCain) versus change (Obama). McCain’s biggest disadvantage was his affiliation, as a Republican, with the highly unpopular sitting president, George W. Bush, a man whose 90 percent approval rating after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 had been squandered on such disasters as the protracted war in Iraq, his administration’s lackluster post–Hurricane Katrina response, and a seriously tanking economy. Although Bush endorsed John McCain, he did not make a single campaign appearance for the Republican candidate, and only appeared at the September Republican Convention via video broadcast. McCain walked a tightrope between supporting the man who was, after all, his commander in chief—when a questioner at a town hall meeting asked him if he supported Bush’s stated goal of keeping troops in Iraq for fifty years, he blustered: “Make it a hundred … that would be fine with me”—and criticizing the president’s policies. It didn’t help any that the Democrats released pictures of a 2004 campaign appearance in which Bush embraced and kissed McCain, who leaned his head bashfully on the president’s shoulder. What kind of “maverick” cozied up with a man whose operatives had once portrayed his wife, Cindy, as a drug addict?
In the meantime, Barack Obama faced his own problems. His longtime pastor was the fiery Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose videotaped sermons reaped a bounty for Republican opposition researchers. Shortly after 9/11, Wright was captured on tape lecturing parishioners at his Trinity United Church in Chicago: “We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki. And we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon.… America’s chickens are coming home to roost!” This played into the fears of some Americans that Barack Obama was a dangerous radical, fears that were heightened when Republicans linked Obama to Bill Ayers, a former member of the radical Weather Underground of the 1960s who, like Obama, had become a Chicago political activist. Although Obama refuted any close relationship between the two men—Ayers, he said, was merely “a guy … who engaged in detestable acts forty years ago, when I was eight years old”—many felt that Obama was a bit too left of center. He furthered this impression by telling a crowd in San Francisco that small-town Americans “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Heading into September 2008, both candidates had a chance at victory, but then McCain suffered twin disasters. The first was his choice of a running mate. Seeking to inject a shot of youth serum into his tired campaign—and to counter Obama’s glam factor—he chose Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner. At first glance, the forty-four-year-old Palin seemed an inspired choice. Plainspoken, independent, and photogenic, she became the first Republican woman candidate for vice president. Her one-liners were soon the talk of America—she told a cheering crowd at the Republican National Convention that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull was “lipstick”—but it quickly became apparent that sh
e was not yet ready for prime time. During the campaign, she was forced to reveal that her sixteen-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant and that $150,000 in campaign contributions had been spent on Palin’s wardrobe—both facts at odds with Palin’s image as a straight-shooting, unfussy, family-values-oriented Alaskan. A disastrous interview with Katie Couric, in which Palin could not remember the name of even one periodical she read regularly, prompted many Americans to wonder if she should be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Even worse for McCain, however, was the massive financial crisis that began in September, when the U.S. housing market bubble burst, financial institutions (including Lehman Brothers) collapsed, and the stock market began an accelerated decline. McCain’s announcement that he was going to “set politics aside” to deal with the crisis (which reached its apex only two days before McCain’s first nationally televised debate with Barack Obama) was widely considered a political publicity stunt. McCain made matters worse when he told an interviewer “the fundamentals of our economy are strong,” even as President Bush was telling congressmen that “this sucker could go down.”
It was all over but the whining. Barack Obama shot to a commanding lead in the polls, one that he would not relinquish.
THE WINNER: BARACK OBAMA
Such is the nature of voting in the twenty-first century that by November 4, 2008, Election Day, 31 percent of the electorate had taken part in “early voting,” an increase of almost 10 percent over 2004. In all, it was a good day for American democracy, as 131.3 million ballots were cast for president. Of those eligible to vote, 61.7 percent actually turned out, the highest percentage since the Goldwater-Johnson slugfest of 1964. The election was closely monitored for the polling irregularities that had plagued Ohio during the 2004 contest, but nothing significant turned up.
The winner, hands down, was Barack Obama. He beat John McCain by nearly 10 million votes, 69,456,897 to 59,934,814, earning 53 percent of popular vote—the most of any Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson—and winning in the Electoral College 375 to 163. Shortly after midnight on November 5, Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech in Grant Park, in Chicago, before an audience estimated at 240,000 people, with millions more watching across the world. He was to be America’s first African American president and he told the crowd, “It’s been a long time coming … but change has come to America.”
“WHO IS THE REAL BARACK OBAMA?” By mid-October, Barack Obama had taken a commanding lead in the polls over John McCain and many Republican voters were growing desperate. When John McCain and Sarah Palin went out stumping, they were met with Obama-hating crowds carrying signs that read “Treason!” Some people shouted “No Communists!” One man stood up at a McCain rally in Wisconsin and yelled: “It’s not the economy. It’s the socialists taking over the country.… When you have an Obama, [Speaker of the House Nancy] Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there [who are] gonna run this country, we’ve got to have our heads examined.” After one woman in Minnesota referred to Obama as an Arab, McCain finally demurred: “No, ma’am, he’s a decent family man.” But his campaign was, at least in part, responsible for fomenting this type of anger. Earlier, Sarah Palin, in a script written for her by the McCain campaign, said of the Democratic candidate, “This is not a man who sees America as you and I do—as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists [referencing former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers] who targeted their own country.”
In the meantime, playing on fears that Obama was not what he appeared to be, McCain asked at campaign stops, “Who is the real Barack Obama?” Rumors swept through the Republican base that Obama had really been born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and so could not be president. People claimed that he had attended Muslim terrorist schools in Indonesia and that, now, as a secret Muslim, he intended to burrow into the infrastructure of American democracy and wreak havoc. (In fact, Obama had attended a public school in Indonesia and had not received Muslim religious training.) There were also those who said that Obama, if elected, would insist on being sworn in on a Koran instead of a Bible. And so on. In the end, these rumors did not keep Barack Obama from being elected, but they would follow him into his presidency.
THE BIGGEST CELEBRITY IN THE WORLD Members of the McCain campaign felt Obama’s “elitist” image was a major political liability—so on July 30 they released a television spot to exploit this weakness. Called “Celeb,” the attack ad featured pictures of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears intercut with shots of Obama waving to cheering crowds. “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world,” a female narrator whispered, “but is he ready to lead?” Accompanying the release of the ad was an e-mail to reporters from Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager: “Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand ‘MET-Rx chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew—Black Forest Berry Honest Tea’ and worry about the price of arugula.”
The ad was effective but the Obama team quickly struck back. On the day “Celeb” was released, Obama told a crowd in Missouri, “Nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. ‘You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills. He’s too risky.’ ”
The McCain campaign then claimed that Obama was playing “the race card” (by referring to “all those other presidents on those dollar bills”) and responded aggressively by asserting (rather hilariously, given the nature of their ad) that Obama’s Missouri comments were “divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.” Still, “Celeb” helped McCain a good deal—by August, he had pulled even with Obama in most polls.
“UM, ALL OF THEM” There have been many disastrous media fiascoes by America’s vice-presidential candidates—Spiro Agnew’s referring to a Japanese American reporter as a “fat Jap” and Dan Quayle’s misspelling of the word potato at an elementary school come leaping to mind—but none had more impact than Sarah Palin’s September 2008 three-part interview with CBS’s Katie Couric. Going into the interview, Palin was still riding fairly high from her appearance at the Republican National Convention earlier that month—until Americans witnessed exchanges like this one:
Couric: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?
Palin: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land boundary that we have with Canada. It’s funny that a comment like that was kinda made to … I don’t know, you know … reporters.
Couric: Mocked?
Palin: Yeah, mocked, I guess that’s the word, yeah.
Couric: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign-policy credentials.
Palin: Well, it certainly does, because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of.
And this one:
Couric: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this—to stay informed and to understand the world?
Palin: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media—
Couric: But which ones specifically? I’m curious.
Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.
Couric: Can you name any of them?
Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news. Alaska isn’t a foreign country, where, it’s kind of suggested and it seems like, “Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking and doing when you live up there in Alaska?” Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.
In memoirs written after the campaign, Palin would claim that the McCain camp
aign left her unprepared for a national interview with an unsympathetic questioner, while the McCain camp said that Palin simply didn’t adequately prepare. Regardless of whom you believe, the interview was an instant disaster, making Palin a national laughingstock and calling John McCain’s judgment into question at a time when he could least afford it.
APPENDIX:
Top Ten Classic Attacks in Presidential Elections
Some things never change—like the ways in which presidential candidates go after each other. Below are ten classic slights, slurs, and smears used almost continuously during two hundred years of presidential electioneering.
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