Word: mccains
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...McCain's swing to the right during the primaries still wasn't enough to win over many conservatives. That forced him to pursue a strategy during the general election that put galvanizing the Republican base ahead of inspiring centrist swing voters. By selecting as his running mate Sarah Palin, an inexperienced favorite of conservatives, over alternatives who would have appealed to independents, McCain not only missed a chance to win over those voters but also undermined his greatest advantage over Barack Obama - his deep record on national security. At a critical moment, McCain simply gave the experience card away...
...Finally, the candidate who had promised a civil and elevated debate wound up waging a reckless, spaghetti-on-the-wall character assault - Obama's a vacuous celebrity! A dangerous naif! A friend to terrorists! A closet socialist! - against an opponent whose preternatural poise made McCain's every charge seem desperate. He convinced himself that Obama was dishonorable and unqualified and was persuaded by his aides to believe that the only way to win was to make the Democrat seem unacceptable to voters. As a result, McCain reaped the worst of all worlds: voters saw McCain as both a Bush clone...
...Given the twin burdens he bore of a dismally unpopular incumbent Republican President and an already staggering economy that fell off a cliff in October, it is possible that McCain never had a chance. For all his cred as a maverick, McCain built that reputation on issues like tobacco, campaign finance, pork-barrel spending, immigration and torture, all of which were peripheral to the general-election debate. Meanwhile, on problems that worried voters most - the economy, health care, jobs - neither McCain's record in the past nor his proposals for the future were distinguishable from the standard Republican fare promoted...
...campaign closed, a common fantasy among some of McCain's old associates went like this: the old bomber pilot would pull back on the stick before Election Day, right his wobbly plane and mount a clean push for victory. Instead, McCain just corkscrewed into the ground. And so it will be important to see what lessons McCain learns from his campaign and what role he plays as a member of a shrunken minority in Congress. Will he harbor bitter memories of his defeat and the poor treatment he feels he received from his old friends in the national media...
...After his loss to Bush in 2000, McCain became the go-to Republican for Democrats looking for a partner on a big piece of legislation. He joked about sleeping like a baby after losing (i.e., waking up and crying in the middle of the night), but he dealt with defeat and his new prominence by pouring his energy into his work on Capitol Hill. "I think you'll see a lot of straight talk from him right away," says veteran GOP consultant Scott Reed. "He'll be the first to criticize what he really didn't like about the campaign...