Scary, sure, but plausible?

There are reasons to be skeptical about it, but there's enough scary stuff in E.J. Dionne's column today to keep me up at night:

McCain-Bush in 2008?

That would be John and Jeb, the most logical Republican ticket if the party remains in the polling doldrums. If President Bush and his political maestro, Karl Rove, decide that the only way to create a political legacy is to nod toward the Arizona senator with whom they have battled and feuded, they will go for the guy who can win.

Dionne goes into some detail about his reasons for thinking this in the column, which you should really read.  A few problems that I note:

1) In 2008, I think that the republican legacy will be pretty tarnished.  Unless Iraq suddenly becomes a spectacular success and a bipartisan (i.e., not just Ben Nelson) social security plan emerges, and the economy magically turns great, a lot central tenets of modern republicanism will have been defeated either empircally or in spirit.  So while McCain, with his squeaky clean honesty and POW status, might be the best they can do, it might also be that republican ideology will have been largely discredited by 2008. 

2) This possibility makes it even harder for McCain, given that G. W. Bush is still popular within his party and extremely unpopular outside of it -- he'll have to choose to what extent he can run on the Bush legacy.  This is a problem for him uniquely because a primary reason that McCain is well thought-of by Dems and independents is because of his status as a maverick.  If he starts running uncritically on the Bush legacy, he'll lose that status.  If he distances himself too much from Bush, he'll never gain the support (or even the tacit acceptance) of a religious right that absolutely hates him.  It's an unusually delicate balance for him. 

3) If the second Bush term continues to go the way it's going now, Jeb will be a liability -- unless he can convince people he's not like his brother.  But if he can do that, why have him on the ticket in the first place?  The point of having a Bush on the ticket is that he's a Bush.  And if the Bush brand has become damaged by then, there's no reason having one around. 

4) Even if a second Bush term turns around a bit, I have a hard time believing that the American public wouldn't have some kind of Bush fatigue.  Another Bush? the Dems would say.  Surely there are other qualified people in a country of 300 million. 

5) McCain's really old.  Seriously.  He'll be 72 in 2008, which means he'll be 76 in 2012, which means he'd be 80 by the end of a second term.  Nothing against old people or anything, but you gotta wonder about this...

Still, though there are many reasons for Dems to be wary of this combination, not least of which is McCain's popularity, and the perception that he's a moderate even though he's not.  Dionne smartly mentions that

For all these reasons, Bush and McCain could end up as each other's best friends. Bush has been battling, with Rove's help, for a long-term political realignment in favor of the Republicans. The president could well come to see McCain as the only Republican with a chance to push a Republican era forward. McCain, in turn, knows that his only way around the Republican right is to run with Bush's open blessing, if not his outright endorsement.

For all his stupidity, Bush has some shrewdness as a politician, and I don't see any reason to doubt that he doesn't sincerely want a long-term realignment in favor of republicans.  I think Dionne's take on that aspect of Bush's character is right on. 

What remains to be seen is still the reaction of the religious right, and I think Dionne overestimates the president's chances of swaying them. 

In any case, Dems need to start re-branding McCain right now.  Not to be mean to him, but to stop this nonsense about McCain's moderation now.  He's a conservative, but an honest one.  We can win against that. 

As for Jeb, he should be ridiculed (the "little brother"), so that no one can even take him seriously by the time he gets to the national stage.

-- Michael

Comments

[Avedon]

He's not that honest, and he hangs out with racists.

[kerry]

Squeaky Clean Campaign Question:

Your opposition to a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in Arizona was what, exactly?

[HWL]

Honest by republican standards, i.e., didn't lie about John Kerry. Doesn't buy the propoganda about the insurgency being defeated by dinner tomorrow. Look, I don't like him either, I'm just saying...

Didn't know the thing about the MLK holiday.

[the exile]

Colin Powell is going to win the Republican nomination, assuming he chooses to run. You gasp? You laugh? The only way it happens, of course, is by means of a catastrophic implosion of Bushco and the fundies, as well as so much REALLY desperately bad news from Iraq that it finally sinks in that the war is perhaps lost. But is that prospect particularly farfetched? I don't think so. The worse the crisis is, the more the Republican base will pine for a savior, and somehow I just don't think McCain is going to be that man. Powell may even win back many of the suburban independents that can't stomach Bush but are too muddled by the propaganda to realize that the Democrats share their interests and values. Thune maybe as VP. No qualifications, of course, but tall and good looking.

How do I feel about this? mixed, because I long ago lost all respect for Powell, yet maybe he could be the one-term President who would get us out of a lost war and take the heat for doing so.

[Jonathan Dresner]

McCain-JebBush would violate the Republicans' (i.e. Bushes) pattern of ideological loyalty over capability or balance. No, if a Bush runs, the VP will be a very loyal underling, and http://hnn.us/articles/1803.html>that kind of ticket usually wins.

[Michael]

Colin Powell has about as much chance of winning the Republican nomination for president in 2008 as I do. The Bushoviki all hate him for pointing out in public that their emperor has no clothes. Their extremist base will never vote for a black man. And when it comes to the general election, most moderate voters (and virtually all liberals) aren't going to support an Uncle Tom who didn't have what Governor Blagojevich recently called the "testicular virility" to resign when it became obvious that his boss was hanging him out to dry at every possible opportunity.

Powell literally has no base of support.

[Cheryl]

I seriously doubt that the GOP would nominate a token black for president. I also seriously doubt that the GOP will nominate a conservative. The ticket will be another evangelical dufus in slot #1 and another shark in slot #2, unless they can find a marketable neocon shark for slot #1, leaving Dan Quayle to fill slot #2.

I am basically expecting Cheney to run for pres in 2008. If a senile fossil like Reagan is good enough to lead the country, why not a cardiac basket case like Cheney? They could always remove his heart and give him a Jarvik. Spiritually, the change would be transparent. Hell, they could even give him a black helmet to pant through too.

Anybody know which prominent GOP neocon has a white-bread Ozzie and Harriet family, a private dynastic fortune, a pretty face, a glib tongue and deep connections to both the military-industrial complex and the Christian militants? That will be the candidate. Bank on it.

[dolphin]

I think we'll have quite the fight to win if McCain were to get the 2008 GOP nomination, but fortunately, I don't see that happening.

You nailed it at the end when you called McCain a conservative, but the thing is, the GOP is no longer a party of conservatives. The party has gone so far to the extremist neo-con and religous right that McCain doesn't stand a chance of getting through the primaries.

I'm still hoping that they run Condi Rice (regardless of hat she says at the moment). Getting the neo-con base to vote for a black woman will be about as easy as winning the "war of terra" and would more or less assure us victory.

[Joyful Alternative]

Honest? Squeaky clean? Keating Five.

[Quinn Jenkins]

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