John McCain, Agent of Change?

John McCain's campaign, until recently, has run on one of two themes. The first was that McCain, as a long-time Washington insider who has the ear of numerous foreign politicians and leaders, would be more effective than Barack Obama, who is largely based on empty rhetoric. The second part is that John McCain is not an average Republican.

In an election season where simply being Republican is likely to kill the careers of dozens of Congressmen and a number of Senators, it is clear that McCain had to do something to distance himself from his party, and its deeply unpopular president. However, in recent weeks he has moved even further, promising real change in Washington. His nomination of Sarah Palin, another supposed maverick with an appetite for change, is supposed to demonstrate this.

This policy is hugely risky. Firstly, it means throwing away the biggest stick that the McCain camp had to beat Obama with: that Barack Obama, a freshman senator, was simply not qualified to become President. To some degree, this particular tack lost a lot of its effectiveness with the selection of Palin as McCain's running mate, but by trying to appropriate the "change" mantra, it means that McCain's previously vaunted Washington experience now becomes something of a liability.

Secondly, it has led the McCain camp into some extremely dodgy situations vis-a-vis the veracity of their claims. John McCain is pro-stem cell research; Sarah Palin is not. John McCain has run adverts claiming that Barack Obama opposes immigration reform, despite the fact that both men's Senate voting records on the subject are identical. Sarah Palin was a supposed anti-pork campaigner. This in spite of the fact that she sought over $400 million in specific federal earmarks, and campaigned heavily for the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere" in Gravina Island. McCain is a big supporter of clamping down on global warming, Palin has gone on record claiming it to be a fabrication, or at least not related to human activity.

Perhaps the biggest danger facing John McCain is that now the central theme of his campaign is the same as Barack Obama's, and he is now fighting on Obama's home turf. Obama can now claim, with some justification, that McCain is now simply jumping on the change bandwagon out of desperation. Similarly, with John McCain's long history in Washington, and his voting record (about 90% along party lines), why, the Obama camp can ask, has he only noticed the need for change now that he's running for president?

Given that a huge majority of Americans think that their country is on the wrong track, and that the Republican brand is very unpopular in America at the moment, it was perhaps necessary that John McCain would have to claim to be a different sort of politician. The problem for him is, he may not be able to do so with the same credibility or effectiveness as Barack Obama, and it may yet be his downfall.