Why Mitt Romney Would Make A Bad Choice As McCain’s Running Mate

Despite Mitt Romney’s supposed economic credentials, McCain must resist the temptation to put him on his ticket as the republican candidate for Vice President.

There have been murmurings about the possibility of Mitt Romney joining the McCain bid for the white house as the republican VP nominee, a fact McCain has himself acknowledged. Given the former Massachusetts governor’s storied success as a businessman, and with economic concerns becoming increasingly crucial for Americans, McCain could well be tempted to entertain putting Romney on his ticket. It would be a big mistake.

There are three reasons why Mitt Romney would make a poor choice for Senator McCain as running mate. Firstly, Romney’s focus would clearly be on the 2012 election, and it would be seen to be so. Secondly, the two candidate’s genuine dislike for each other was too evident during the republican primary campaign season for their union to appear credible to voters. Thirdly, Romney’s tendency to promise the earth to whoever was prepared to vote for him during his primary campaign gives him a credibility deficit that would be too easily exploited by McCain’s democrat opponent in the fall.

Romney’s apparent interest in becoming McCain’s VP is political opportunism−a direct path to the Republican nomination for a shot at the White House in 2012. Romney’s record of pandering to voters makes this fact all too evident. He is interested in his own political ambitions and not in the interests of the country. This would not serve a one-term McCain administration particularly well, nor would it please voters looking for a candidate genuinely focused on fixing America’s economic woes.

Given McCain and Romney’s very public spats during the republican primary debates and the negativity with which each campaign targeted each other, a McCain/Romney presidential bid would be difficult for the public to swallow. This is not to suggest voters are naïve enough to hope for a president and vice-president that are genuine friends and allies. However, political rivalry−which best describes most president/vice-president relationships−is a different kind of relationship to active distaste. Governor Romney is to Senator McCain everything that is wrong with politics. He is the style to McCain’s substance, the conservative’s everyman to McCain’s commitment to making good policy.

Some might argue this makes for a perfect political union. Where McCain can be trusted to make the right decisions for America, Romney can help sell it. The problem with this view is that part of McCain’s appeal in the first place is his reputation−justified or otherwise−for being far more interested in good policy than good politics. His support for the surge in Iraq is the best example of this. Adding Romney to his ticket would undo this hard-won reputation, which, in combination with the lack of a genuine Reagan republican, was what got McCain the party’s nomination. Among core McCain supporters, and evidently among core republican voters (given their reluctance to embrace Mitt Romney during the primaries), Romney riding the straight talk express would be a bit too much of a stretch of the imagination, and juicy political fodder for the democrats.

Thirdly, among independent and even some republican voters, Romney suffers a severe credibility problem. This is his own doing. He flip-flopped on almost every moral issue to arise during the campaign, lied about his past, (his hunting credentials, and the ‘figure of speech’ debacle surrounding his father’s non-participation in a Martin Luther King Jnr. march being prime examples), and promised the simply unfathomable to any voter prepared to listen.

Promising Michigan voters to bring automobile industry jobs back from abroad was a particularly sharp assault on the intelligence of the average republican voter. In his efforts to portray himself as a so-called Regan republican, Romney cut a figure of the type of opportunistic politician voters have tired so much of. He treated republican voters as if they were far less sophisticated than they turned out to be, and he paid the political price. It is difficult to see voters looking past those efforts.

Despite having marketable economic credentials, Romney would be an enormous political liability for McCain, and he is simply not sophisticated enough to help McCain take northeastern independents away from either Clinton or Obama−the only bloc for which he would be worth considering as the VP nominee. Romney’s posturing for VP makes sense given the economy’s emergence as the most important issue to American voters. McCain, however, should trust his instincts and select a running mate he at least has some degree of respect for.

Pandering in the Wrong Direction − McCain’s Path Forward

The GOP’s probable nominee is working hard to foster support among his party’s base, but he would be better served worrying about moderates and independents.

Having all-but sewn up the Republican Party nomination, Senator John McCain is busy rallying conservatives behind his bid for the White House. Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, is positioning himself as the suitable running mate for the GOP candidate many in the party are reluctant to embrace.

McCain needs to tread carefully. While shoring up support among Republicans is important during these early stages − if for no other reason than to create the illusion of unity − the Arizona senator risks out-flanking himself on the left if he steps too far over the fine line between energizing the Republican base and appealing to moderates and independents. Choosing Mike Huckabee as the Republican vice-presidential nominee would be an erroneous and unnecessary political maneuver on McCain’s part.

Should Hillary Clinton win the Democratic nomination, McCain will have little need to ferment support in his own party. Sen. Clinton is a Republican get-out-the-vote campaign all unto herself. Despite Ann Coulter’s claims to the contrary, no GOP stalwart will withhold support for their candidate in a presidential race in which the cost of losing is a Hillary Clinton White House.

Sen. Barack Obama will be less polarizing and will present McCain with a whole different set of problems, but the conservative faithful can hardly be expected to abandon a not-quite-Reagan Republican for an anti-war African-American Democrat whose middle name is Hussein. McCain, against either potential opponent, would find it more difficult to lose the support of Republican voters than to win it.

Karl Rove’s base strategy worked against a largely uninspiring Democratic nominee in John Kerry in 2004, but had the Democrats chosen Howard Dean as their candidate, the Bush II campaign would have aggressively targeted the swinging voters they claimed didn’t exist.

Among conservatives, the threat of a Howard Dean administration was always going to be more offensive than a John Kerry White House, New England liberal though he was. That was precisely the reason, of course, Dean did not get his party’s nomination − his beliefs were classic democratic dogma, but he was not considered electable. The appropriate political tactic against a polarizing opponent is to target swinging voters and independents, confident that your base will come out whether you appeal to them or not.

With a conservative base, then, shored up one way or the other, and especially so if Clinton is nominated as the opposing candidate, McCain’s biggest mistake now would be to choose Mike Huckabee as his running mate. It would be a knee jerk response to the concerns many conservatives are currently voicing. In Michigan on January 15 the former Baptist minister frightened a great many Americans calling for an amendment to the Constitution to reflect ‘God’s standards’. Huckabee’s dream run in the GOP campaign to date has benefited from his socially conservative values. These would only be liabilities on a presidential ticket.

John McCain, given his age, would be an unlikely two-term president, so whoever his running mate is will almost certainly be the Republican nominee in 2012. Just as Hillary Clinton and her grand ideas for socialized healthcare frightens Republican voters, Huckabee incites fears among Democrats in much the same way. The threat of his having any influence in a McCain White House and of possibly succeeding McCain would energize the left-wing faction of the Democrats and turn swing voters off in a way that Clinton or Obama could never hope to. McCain would do well to avoid those risks.

Republicans are right to be concerned about the relative poor showing in the primary elections, and correct to suggest it was a result of the absence − the insipid Thompson and Brownback campaigns aside − of a genuine conservative in the race. With either Sen. Clinton or Obama replacing Mitt Romney as his rival, McCain will find the Republican base much less difficult to inspire come November.

Romney Campaign Undermines Democracy

The Mitt Romney presidential campaign suggests money and cynical politics are encroaching on good public policy and healthy democratic debate.

As the three remaining Republican presidential hopefuls emerge from the crucial Florida primary vote, it appears increasingly unlikely that the party’s evangelicals will get their man in former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, but Arizona senator John McCain’s victory in the Sunshine State gives them some reason to celebrate. McCain’s success in the state puts him one step closer to ending the aspirations of Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and a Mormon.

The evangelical bloc’s yearning for someone – anyone – in the Republican field to get between Mitt Romney and the nomination is shared by some rather unusual bed-fellows − those with a strong belief in democracy. Romney’s campaign has shown such a disregard for healthy democratic debate and displayed such a cynical approach to adversarial, competitive politics that should his candidacy prove successful – even in only grabbing the Republican nomination − it will represent a strong indication that the great American democracy is beginning to buckle under the weight of clever, well-financed politics.

Figures vary, but the Romney budget for the Iowa caucuses was fifteen to twenty times that of eventual winner, Mike Huckabee. He then went into New Hampshire splurging more money on TV advertisements than all his rivals combined, only to lose to Sen. McCain. The voters in Michigan were bombarded with $2 million worth of advertising, three times McCain’s spend and four times that of Huckabee.

As they headed into the Florida primary vote, the Romney campaign outspent McCain by five-to-one, ploughing around $30 million in advertising into the state. McCain had to restrict his spend to radio and youtube ads. While there is nothing to prevent these kinds of spending disparities among candidates, if there is any democratic spirit to be extracted from American election campaign finance structures it is that by permitting candidates to raise campaign funding through donations, the system favors those with the most appealing policies. The more popular the message, the more donations the candidate will attract, and the more they can then spend spreading that message. Romney, and other self-funded nominees before him, turns this pattern on its head.

The American campaign finance system has, of course, dubious democratic credentials, but a good flow of information enhances democracy by helping the public remain informed. An informed public will make better decisions when electing their politicians. The problem is that getting this information out costs money. There is nothing inherently malevolent about Mitt Romney for either being a multi-millionaire or being prepared to significantly finance his efforts, although personal ambition is not the ideal platform from which a campaign for the white house should be launched. Romney’s preparedness to take advantage of the American campaign finance system does not serve democracy in America particularly well.

With Mike Huckabee’s unexpected rise in the polls prior to the Iowa caucuses, Romney’s advisors saw the need for their candidate to give the speech he hoped to be able to avoid. Certainly, should he win the Republican nomination, it will be a speech he might well regret having made.

Romney’s Mormonism should not be a reason for voter hesitance. However, his defense of his religion in his ‘Faith in America’ address referred strongly to its Christian foundations. John F Kennedy claimed being Catholic would not influence his decisions, and voters should therefore be comfortable with his faith. Romney’s position on his own Mormonism was that it would influence his decisions as president, and that should be fine with Republican voters, as fellow Christians.

His speech left little room in politics for secularists or non-Christians. It was a remarkable attack on the Constitution − which specifically proscribes, in the First Amendment, the prohibiting of the free exercise of faith. It generally undermined the notion of the separation of church and state on which the American democracy relies so heavily. It is comforting to know that in a presidential campaign Romney − if he makes it that far − will need to retract some of the content of the position he outlined in that December 6 speech to appeal to a wider set of voters. It is less comforting to know that some well-paid advisors considered it politically savvy to send the message in the first place.

What America needs now in a president is not Messianism. Of course, the same criticism is better directed at Mike Huckabee. In Michigan on January 15 the former Baptist minister frightened a great many Americans calling for an amendment to the Constitution to reflect ‘God’s standards’. It might well have been the moment his presidential hopes ended. With Huckabee, though, voters at least know what they are going to get. He means what he says. When it comes to former governor Romney, discerning the rhetoric from what he actually believes is far more difficult. Indeed, it has been argued that he doesn’t actually stand for anything at all… except getting elected.

In an attack on Romney’s apparently re-positioned stance on Iraqi withdrawal, Sen. McCain claimed the former governor had “hedged, equivocated, ducked, and reversed himself.” Romney’s back-peddling has become somewhat habitual throughout this race. He claimed the NRA endorsed his candidacy in the 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial race. It did not. He repealed his claim to have marched with his father with Martin Luther King Jr. by brushing it off as a ‘figure of speech.’ From being a hunter all his life to having hunted small game on two occasions, to his tough stance on immigration despite employing illegal immigrants at his house, Romney has often found the facts difficult obstacles to overcome.

He has also gained notoriety for flip-flopping on issues such as gay marriage, gun ownership, and abortion rights. Romney claims some of his positions have ‘evolved.’ His critics suggest that when it comes to moral issues that go to the heart of GOP beliefs, such as abortion rights and gun control, a candidate either believes something or they do not. Republicans consider any ‘evolving’ of views in the moral sphere with a great deal of mistrust.

Revisiting and rethinking issues is not necessarily a sign of a lack of clarity or a chronic propensity to engage in misrepresentation for political gain. In fact, a candidate’s preparedness to question their prior decisions or judgments is reflective of the type of humility and flexibility Americans are possibly looking for in a president after eight years of Bush stubbornness and arrogance. Barack Obama, at least among Democrats, has suffered little from his own admission of youthful waywardness. Certainty becomes a negative trait when you remain certain in the face of overwhelming evidence suggesting your beliefs are wrong. Yet Romney’s penchant for hedging, flip-flopping, evolving… call it what you will, has taken on proportions that border on the absurd. More saliently, the problem is not that he flip-flops, it’s why he flip-flops.

Mitt Romney has earned a reputation as a candidate who will say anything to get elected. Nowhere was that more evident than in Michigan. His stunning victory in that state’s Republican primary on January 15 was as much a warning about the risks inherent in democracy as a boost to a flagging presidential campaign. Romney promised Michigan voters that he would return auto-industry jobs to their state − jobs that have been lost to foreign countries. He went to Michigan offering a message of hope. False hope.

John McCain was doing just the opposite, telling the people of Michigan that jobs lost to car manufacturers overseas were “not coming back.” He outlined plans to tackle the unemployment problems the state is suffering from − at 7.4%, the nation’s highest. Unfortunately for McCain, voters were looking for a message of hope, not a message outlining viable solutions to recognized problems.

Romney’s victory in Michigan is an example of cynical politics at its most damning. It showed that a clever politician with a lot of money and a well-oiled machinery can convince a public enduring high unemployment rates, a failing economy, and a general level of despair of, well, something with which most economists in the world would disagree. It showed that democracy carries with it great risks − risks that are amplified during times of economic or social hardship.

Contrasting Romney’s preparedness to promise what he had no intention − or ability − to deliver to the people of Michigan with McCain’s refusal to pledge support for ethanol subsidies to the people of Iowa makes for an interesting study. After the Bush II campaign’s distasteful tactics in South Carolina in 1999, McCain, if anyone, might be excused for adopting a more cynical approach to politics. Yet he campaigned only lightly in Iowa, knowing his chances of success were minimal given his misgivings about ethanol subsidies. He paid the appropriate political price, getting only 13% of the vote.

Sen. McCain refuses to support the ethanol subsidies that fuel the state’s economy because he believes they are bad economic and environmental policy. This does not suggest John McCain is incapable of engaging in nasty politics. His cheap shot at Romney in the Republican debate in New Hampshire about him being the ‘candidate of change’ is a case in point. The idea of the ‘Straight Talk Express’ is a great political tool, and he uses it to maximum effect. When John McCain wins, he likes to remind us, it’s because he told people the truth. When he loses, it’s because he told people the truth. In the long-run, it’s an appealing political strategy.

Strategy or not, however, it is at least consistent and it also appears to reflect an understanding on McCain’s part that American voters are sophisticated enough to accommodate nuance. McCain is − and has always been − supportive of the war in Iraq, supportive of continued American engagement, and supportive of the surge. He was not supportive of the administration’s general handling of Iraq. These positions are not mutually inconsistent and the American public gets it. The McCain campaign is one that takes place in the setting of a modern, attentive, engaged democracy. The Romney campaign, in contrast, has assumed at all stages that the public is capable only of understanding snapshots and sound bites.

Romney, to different audiences, has been the candidate of change, the Washington outsider, the immigration hawk, the successful businessman who knows how to run an economy, and most recently, the real conservative. His campaign smacks of a very base style of politics. He has the funds to present himself in whatever way he feels will most likely attract votes − and then back that up with a new image for the next primary a week later.

McCain’s debacle at Baghdad’s Shorja market in April 2007 was a reassuring reminder that some politicians simply don’t do politics very well. The senator’s claim on the Republican nomination for president is based primarily on policy. His immigration proposal is a realistic, yet humane, response to a significant problem. A nuanced form of amnesty. His support for the war in Iraq is support for the policy matched with criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of it. His proposal to the voters of Michigan was a series of retraining and education schemes that would help the state adjust to economic realities.

He speaks a more complex language to the public because the issues are complex, and one-line answers to immigration, Iraq, and unemployment do not address the problems in a reasoned fashion. Romney criticizes McCain’s immigration bill as amnesty, and therefore bad policy. The spirit of healthy democratic debate requires much more from its practitioners.

Watching the two men battle out the final stages of this race is to watch a battle between two different kinds of politics. Regardless of the outcome, America’s dynamic democracy has received a clear shot across the bow. Mitt Romney is, of course, more a symbol of this threat than a cause, and no victory of political rhetoric over policy needs to be taken to suggest the great American democratic experiment should be thrown out in favor of a system less precarious − simply that it needs better protection from the cynicism of adversarial politics.

The media and education are any society’s sharpest tools against the threat politics can present to forming good public policy. Mitt Romney may not be America’s next president, but when money and clever politics can get someone so lacking in vision and sound policy proposals as far as being the possible Republican nominee, it seems time America’s tools were sharpened.