Current common wisdom suggests that John McCain will be the next president of the United States, in part because he is supposedly experienced, and in part because he has “earned” the privilege through his years in the Senate. However, the parallels to the Mondale campaign of 1984 seem inevitable, and do not bode well for Mr. McCain and his vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin.
In the 1984 presidential campaign, Democrats were hopeful that Walter Mondale had the experience and temperament to beat Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. for the White House. Senator Mondale then chose the inexperienced and wholly unknown congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro from NY as his vice presidential pick, a choice which in retrospect did not improve the chances of winning the election. Reagan and Bush won in a landslide, with Mondale and Ferraro only taking Minnesota and the District of Columbia. This was one of the worst defeats in modern presidential campaign history.
If we take a quick look back at the politics of the mid 1980s, the so-called Reagan revolution was underway, and the Democratic-controlled Congress was increasingly unpopular. The liberal politics of the 1960’s and 1970’s were coming to an end, and “trickle down economics” and pro-business policies were on the rise. The political pendulum was swinging fast. This era then led to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 during Bill Clinton’s first term, and the rest is history.
If we examine the McCain campaign with respect to the Obama campaign, several striking similarities to the election of 1984 stand out. First is the political ascendancy of the Democrats as the Bush era comes to a close. The Bush era is marked by greater public disdain, distrust, and disgust than even the “stagflationary” Jimmy Carter era.
Second is the star power of Barack Obama as compared with McCain, who seems out of touch, grouchy and sour. Senator Obama draws huge enthusiastic crowds, while McCain has trouble even getting reporters to attend his speeches. This star-power effect was clearly the case with Ronald Reagan, who was B movie Hollywood star, but a grade-A political star in the mid 1980’s, at least as far as Republicans and many independents were concerned. Mondale couldn’t even begin to match Reagan’s popularity at the time. This is also true of Obama and McCain, except in reverse.
Then there is the cross-over vote potential. Reagan was known for drawing in many so-called Reagan Democrats, which helped usher in the landslide of the 1984 election. However, this time around it looks like a great deal of the cross-over voting will be independents and Republicans voting for change.
Problems with the economy helped Reagan win reelection in 1984, whereas the current economic problems are almost certain to help Obama rather than McCain. Of course, after winning re-election, Reagan’s economic policies led to the S&L crisis and massive tax-payer funded bailout, but that’s a another story.
The one similarity to the 1984 campaign that now seems inevitable is the choice of an unknown woman politician as the vice presidential candidate. Walter Mondale chose a New York congresswoman that virtually no one outside of New York had ever heard of. Similarly, John McCain chose Sarah Palin, a governor virtually unknown outside the state of Alaska. Palin’s current “trooper-gate”, and unwed pregnant daughter problems aside, it is clear to most people that McCain chose her as a running mate for purely political reasons in an attempt to lure Hillary Clinton supporters to the McCain camp. This was the charge leveled at Mondale back in 1984. The choice of Palin will certainly not help bolster McCain's maverick status, and will paint him instead as a faux maverick.
It will be very interesting to see if the election of 2008 plays out as a mirror image of the election of 1984. I doubt highly that Barack Obama will be able to manage the same type of landslide that Ronald Reagan did in the election of 84, but I am growing more hopeful every day that after the public has a chance to listen to McCain and Obama over the next two months, that they are going to opt for a reversal of politics, with the pendulum swinging rapidly away from the Bush era, and toward the Obama era.
Dr. John Moffett is an active research neuroscientist in the Washington, DC area, who has published over 45 scientific articles on the nervous and immune systems. Dr. Moffett is also the author and webmaster of the political opinion website www.Factinista.org, and is a Managing Editor at OpEdNews.com.
McCain is a weak candidate, but the Mondale comparison
doesn't really capture it, IMO. The main feature of the Reagan campaigns was that his image played on the theme of "America standing tall, again." Back in those halcyon days, the public still was under the impression that America was "really" a great & exceptional country; & that the only real problems we had, had been caused by very temporary & easily-fixed factors -- mainly wimpy (Democratic) leadership. The voters were ready to fall for a "tough-talking, no nonsense" hardliner, because their underlying confidence in the country itself hadn't yet really been shaken.
But today, neither side can play that theme again, because the public realizes that the country has really gone off the rails, & that the problem is no mere temporary matter of who happens to be in the White House. The realization is spreading that the problems are very very deep, & that neither party is capable of solving them.
So I'd say that BOTH candidates are very weak. One of them is going to win, but it won't be because that candidate fools the public the way Reagan did. // Mondale himself was really a non-factor. He was simply the wimpy Democrat of the moment. It didn't matter who he was, since Reagan had all the (manufactured) "charisma" and "star power." The election was just Reagan vs the generic Democrat.
This time, it will be mostly a question of which candidate they hate & mistrust worse. It could go either way. But it won't be a matter of either candidate seducing the masses with a phony line of "standing tall" again. People understand, at some level, that those days are over. They're not looking for glory, they're only looking for "barely adequate." They'll accept almost anything; expectations are low.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1293 comments)
on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 at 3:39:38 PM
You know I was around when Mondale tried for the prize and I always believed he could have been a very good president. McCain on the other hand is too old! Much too old as he is already exibiting the telltale signs of Dementia. So unless you want Palin ( the beauty with no credentials) to be the president you had better consider carefully what ticket you will vote for. The Republicans have had the last eight years to do their worst with the country and they did. Think about it, do you really want the same thing for another four years? Will you still own a house if this happens? Will you even be alive? I mean McCain is just aching to drop a nuke somewhere and he is equally responsible for the destruction of the economy. In a democracy you get the government you deserve. Do you deserve four more years of the same?
by
Archie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1338 comments)
on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 at 9:36:00 PM
2 comments
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