Where A Change Is Truly Needed

Given the circumstances the country found itself in as the 2008 presidential campaign was playing out, it is reasonable to doubt whether any Republican could have come out victorious on November 8. But for those Republicans who have not yet brought themselves to do so, it is time to recognize that at a time at which our only – however slim – hope was to put forward one of our absolute best and brightest, our fate was almost certainly sealed by virtue of the fact that John McCain was clearly not the candidate the party should have nominated for president.

Mr. McCain’s service to his country in time of war is certainly admirable, and I personally found myself taking note of this fact every time I saw him on the campaign trail waving to his supporters with arms that he can only raise so high because of what he suffered as a POW. But the election was, for all practical purposes, decided when the party in power at the time of so much turmoil offered to the country a candidate that has spent decades as part of the Washington establishment. It was decided when the party that relies heavily on the support of Christian conservatives nominated a man who had gone to the heart of evangelical country in his 2000 campaign to rail against their influence on the party. It was decided when party whose grass roots believe strongly in the Constitution as written put forward the one member of the party whose name was attached to one of the most blatant attacks on free political speech in memory.

Given these facts, one might wonder how Senator McCain came as close as he did to stopping the Obama juggernaut. Keep in mind that at the time of the Super Tuesday primaries, which effectively sealed his nomination once and for all, conservative Republicans were left wondering what they would do on election day in November, as it was unthinkable to support the Democrat nominee, but distasteful at best to support the Republican one.

At that point, the race was surely shaping up to be a Democrat landslide of unthinkable proportions until Senator McCain made one of the very few wise choices of his campaign – the selection of a true conservative as his running mate that brought thousands of other conservatives to the polls who were thinking seriously of sitting the election out. For all the criticism that has been – unfairly – leveled at her, Sarah Palin saved the McCain campaign much more embarrassment on election night than any she may have allegedly caused during the campaign. There is no doubt that the electoral map would have been much bluer without her than it was with her.

It is a strange phenomenon of this campaign that the Republican nominee for president chose a running mate who was much more appealing to his party’s faithful than he was himself. And therein lies a lesson that should not go unnoticed or unheeded.

John McCain acted wisely in selecting a running mate his party could get behind once he had received the nomination. So why wasn’t the party itself able to select someone for the top of the ticket that it could get behind?

Simple. It wasn’t Republicans who selected the Republican nominee in 2008. It was independents, and perhaps even some Democrats, who voted in the Republican primary who propelled Senator McCain to victory over Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, either one of whom could have put up a much more effective image to counteract young Senator Obama’s nicely-worded mantra of “Change We Can Believe In.”

The fact is that this campaign has highlighted a major flaw in the process used to nominate presidential candidates. Democrats should be allowed to select their party’s nominee, and Republicans should be allowed to select theirs. Just ask any Democrat who was outraged at Rush Limbaugh’s much ballyhooed “Project Chaos” that many were afraid would keep their rightful nominee from receiving his due. Fortunately for the Democrats, their nominee survived the process this time. And though the problem was not an organized movement operating on the Republican side, the problem was there nonetheless, and they were not so lucky as the Democrats.

Granted, there are many in America who are not committed enough to one of the major parties actually become active members, and that is certainly their prerogative. But why should anyone other than a “faithful Democrat” or a “faithful Republican” be allowed to have a voice in choosing either party’s nominee? Both parties should look closely at their internal rules state by state, and strongly consider ending open primaries and closing them to all but committed party members. Only then can they be certain that the process will produce a nominee that has the full-throated support of the party in the electorate. What’s more, it would provide the electorate in general with a much more distinctive choice to make – between what Democrat activists truly stand for, and what Republican activists stand for.

Contrary to many people’s knee-jerk reaction, this would not close independents out of the process of selecting the president, only out of the process of selecting the nominees of the parties which – most would admit – they aren’t committed to across the board anyway.