In politics, the only constant is change

By Darrell Laurant

Published: November 5, 2008

In the midst of the gentle rain falling on downtown Lynchburg Tuesday night came that “giant sucking sound” that Ross Perot loved to talk about. In this case, it was the sound of the energy being sucked out of the local Republican Party.

At the city GOP headquarters in a renovated building on Commerce Street, by the flickering light of a large TV screen, the mood was one of resignation.

“To me,” said Lynchburg Republican chairman Mark Peake, “it’s amazing that McCain has made it this close.”

And to one of the party faithful, he said: “We need to have a meeting soon.”

Yet history tells Republicans that they have no reason to despair, for politics in America is like the ebb and flow of the tides. Traditionally, American voters grow weary of whichever party occupies the White House for eight years and opt for new faces. There have been aberrations (Nixon’s resignation, George Bush the Elder as a one-term surrogate for Ronald Reagan), but the pattern tends to hold true.

Poor John McCain didn’t have a chance. Already dragging around an unpopular war and unpopular Republican incumbent, his campaign was then effectively flushed by the near-collapse of the U.S. economy. Moreover, desperation caused the Republicans to throw Sarah Palin — who will definitely be heard from in the future — into the fire before she was ready.

Personally (and since this is a column, I can speak personally), I think the election of Barack Obama is enormously significant from a symbolic point of view. As Al Sharpton, of all people, pointed out on CNN the other night, there can be no more “Yeah, but you’ll never see an African-American elected President.” That excuse is gone, and the bar has been raised.

(To his credit, George W. Bush did a lot to raise that bar by naming Condoleezza Rice — a black woman — as his Secretary of State.)

Internationally, to those Muslim countries that may be on the fence as far as the United States is concerned, we can say: “We just elected a man whose father was a Muslim. What do you think about that?”

And let’s not forget, as the media pundits tend to do, that Obama is half white.

I’m talking symbolism here. I don’t know what kind of president Barack Obama will make. I don’t know what kind of president John McCain would have made. Those are blank pages — and in McCain’s case, we’ll never know.

Nevertheless, perhaps the Republican Party needs to be renovated and modernized, much like the downtown building it occupied Tuesday night.

We all know that the GOP is against higher taxes, terrorism, abortion and stricter gun laws, but what is it for? I think a lot of voters had trouble figuring that out. At its best, the party is a voice of reason, a moral compass and a fountain of national pride, yet those things didn’t seem to come across.

If nothing else, this election may have finally disproved the old adage that while negative campaigning may be vile, it always works. It certainly didn’t work in North Carolina, where Elizabeth Dole let herself be talked into an ad that accused her Senate opponent (who turned out to be a Sunday School teacher) of not believing in God.

The times are too tenuous, too scary, for such silliness. The motive behind negative campaigning has become more and more transparent — criticize your opponent, and you don’t have to put forth any plans of your own. I think people are wise to that now.

I thought John McCain, by and large, ran his campaign from the high moral ground. He resisted taking cheap shots at Obama that were peripheral to the real issues, or pandering to the overly zealous fringe. He was gracious in defeat.

Maybe this will be the beginning of election strategies that focus on “We can do a better job for you than the other guys, and here’s why” and not “The world is going to end if they’re elected.”

I know a lot of people whose opinions I respect who were fiercely opposed to Obama. As the president-elect mentioned in his victory speech, he needs to listen to them, even if he can’t get them to vote for him. He needs to realize what there is about him that scares and/or enrages them, and try to reassure them.

“I’m their President, too,” he said.

George Bush never seemed to understand that.