Who Did John Mccain Run Agains President Obama the Secind Time

Editor's note: This is the 16th of an 18-chapter profile of Sen. John McCain, portions of which originally were published in October 1999 and March 2007. It has been updated and expanded. Read more about this project: John McCain's American Story.

The city: Denver.

The date: Aug. 28, 2008, 45 years to the day since civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his "I Have a Dream" speech.

The scene: A packed Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium, home of the NFL's Denver Broncos.

The hope-and-change candidate of 2008, Barack Obama, standing in front of a row of styrofoam Greek columns, accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for president with a stirring speech that brought cheers and, at times, tears from many in the audience of 75,000 people.

"Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren't well-off or well-known but shared a belief that, in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to," Obama said in his acceptance speech. "It is that promise that has always set this country apart — that through hard work and sacrifice, each of us can pursue our individual dreams but still come together as one American family, to ensure that the next generation can pursue their dreams as well. ...

"This moment, this election, is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive."

It was a historic milestone as Obama became the first African-American to top a major U.S. party's national ticket.

"I've been crying all night long. It was wonderful," Gladis Ross of Omaha, Nebraska, told The Arizona Republic after attending the convention that day.

"We're just thankful that we've been able to live to see such a day as this," said Clifford Robbins, her son.

The convention got rave reviews. The Democrats were united, energized and mobilized.

By comparison, John McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting, was struggling to energize many of his fellow Republicans. But McCain was about to shake up the race in his own way.

An unknown running mate

As Democratic conventioneers and the media were leaving Denver the next morning, buzz started that McCain had selected his running mate, and it was a shocker.

McCain had been expected to choose from his short list — names such as Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a rising GOP governor of a blue state, or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, McCain's primary rival who turned into a faithful surrogate and friend once McCain secured the party's nomination.

Instead it was Sarah Palin, the little-known governor of Alaska and former mayor of Wasilla, a small city in her home state.

McCain had wanted to make an even bolder pick: his old friend Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who had been Vice President Al Gore's running mate in 2000 and who had crossed party lines the year before to campaign for McCain in New Hampshire.

Lieberman had won his most recent Senate term as an independent. And he would have added an unprecedented bipartisan flavor to McCain's campaign, which had adopted the motto "Country First" to downplay partisanship.

According to the 2010 book "Game Change," a behind-the-scenes account of the 2008 race by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, a McCain-Lieberman ticket was viewed internally as a way to break with President George W. Bush's unpopular presidency, which was seen as the biggest hurdle toRepublicans keeping the White House.

It wasn't to be. While McCain and Lieberman were simpatico on foreign policy, that was about it. Lieberman was an unabashed liberal on most other issues. Most problematic for McCain was Lieberman's support of abortion rights. As speculation swirled that McCain might choose a pro-choice running mate, conservatives were outraged. Per "Game Change," McCain's pollster Bill McInturff tried to gauge the potential impact and found that a McCain-Lieberman ticket would cost more GOP votes than it would swing in independents. And that was assuming there wouldn't be an outright revolt at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

McCain bowed to that reality and selected Palin, who made her presidential campaign trail debut Aug. 29 in Dayton, Ohio.

Charlie Black, a senior McCain adviser, told The Arizona Republic that McCain was impressed by Palin after meeting her in February at a National Governors Association meeting in Washington, D.C.

"What this brings is a spirit of reform and change that is vital now in our nation's capital," McCain said in an Aug. 31 appearance on "Fox News Sunday."

"By the way, in the last day and a half or whatever it's been, we have raised $4 million on the internet. I wish I had taken her a month ago," McCain added.

The Palin pick was a surprise for many reasons, not the least of which was that nobody outside Alaska, besides die-hard political junkies, had ever heard of her. The choice also seemed to undercut McCain's biggest strength against Obama: his long experience on the national scene and in the military relative to Obama. Obama had tried to counter that perception by tapping Joe Biden, a veteran senator from Delaware who had spent years as either chairman or a senior member of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Now McCain's campaign had opened itself to attacks about Palin's lack of experience in national politics or on foreign policy. Her short record in public office also would reveal a taste for the pork-barrel projects that McCain for years had crusaded against as a waste of taxpayer money.

The first time he heard who McCain had picked, Biden asked, "Who's Sarah Palin?" according to the account in "Game Change."

But Palin was a folksy, intriguing newcomer to national politics and provided some welcome contrasts to McCain.

McCain was the epitome of the moderate GOP establishment; she was an anti-establishment conservative. She was 44 years old; he had turned 72 on the day his Palin pick was revealed. And the initial impression of Palin was that she seemed more down to earth than McCain, who recently had been unable to remember how many homes he and his wife, Cindy, owned around the country. (The answer at the time was eight, though, technically, beer-distributionship heiress Cindy controlled the family fortune and their finances were separate.)

There was even speculation inside the McCain campaign that, as a woman with five young children, Palin might appeal to some female voters who were disappointed by Obama's defeat of Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York in the Democratic primaries.

"John was a maverick, and he said he had picked me because in many ways I'm wired the same," Palin would write later in her 2009 memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life."

Palin, an evangelical Christian, was mother to a 4-month-old boy with Down syndrome named Trig, which some conservative opponents of abortion rights took as proof of her "pro-life" bona fides. McCain had long opposed abortion rights, but, for whatever reason, some on the right never considered him sufficiently committed to the issue.

It was another child of Palin's, her unmarried, pregnant, 17-year-old daughter Bristol, who made news on the first day of the GOP convention, which had been scaled back because of Hurricane Gustav. The memories of Hurricane Katrina's devastation were still raw, and Republicans didn't want to be seen holding a partisan celebration while a potentially destructive storm was thrashing the Gulf Coast.

"We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents," Palin and her husband, Todd, said in a written statement released Sept. 1. "As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support."

The revelations of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, which Palin had disclosed to McCain ahead of him finalizing his choice, was fodder for gossip among the bored delegates in St. Paul but otherwise didn't seem to matter much to anyone.

"I heard that from somebody. So what?" Alberto Gutier, an Arizona delegate and die-hard McCainiac, told The Republic in a response that was typical. "It doesn't bother me at all. And that's true of most people. The daughter's not running for anything, OK?"

Because of Gustav, five Republican governors had to stay home instead of attending the convention: Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Charlie Crist of Florida, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Rick Perry of Texas, and Bob Riley of Alabama.

Gustav also caused Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to cancel. They'd been scheduled to speak on Day One. For the McCain campaign and other Republicans in St. Paul, it was probably a relief given the liability Bush and Cheney presented. Even Bush fans who believed history would vindicate the president on the Iraq War recognized he was political poison at the time.

As it turned out, Palin was the big hit of the convention. She used her speech at St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center to introduce herself to a national audience, to stand up for her small-town roots, and take shots at Obama's past career as a community organizer in Chicago.

"Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves," Palin said. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

She also introduced "hockey mom" into the national lexicon in her acceptance of the vice-presidential nomination. "You know the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick," she said in one of her speech's most memorable lines.

By comparison, McCain's nomination acceptance speech the following night was almost anti-climactic.

Becoming the first Arizonan to top a national ticket since Sen. Barry Goldwater in 1964, McCain promised that he and Palin had "the strength, experience, judgment and backbone" to sock it to Washington's "big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second crowd."

"You know, I've been called a maverick, someone who marches to the beat of his own drum," McCain said of his reputation for bucking the GOP at times. "Sometimes, it's meant as a compliment and sometimes it's not. What it really means is I understand who I work for. I don't work for a party. I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you."

McCain and his team left St. Paul with a feeling the deck had been reshuffled. and they were holding a better hand.

That feeling wouldn't last.

Economic meltdown dooms McCain

The U.S. economy had been ailing and about ready to swoon.

There had been warnings about mass mortgage failures and a potential housing bubble. Concern grew to the banking system and its "toxic assets." By September 2008, the United States was in the midst of a financial meltdown.

The federal government on Sept. 7, 2008, seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant mortgage lenders. After Lehman Brothers Holdings filed for bankruptcy Sept. 15, real fear gripped Wall Street. The Federal Reserve on Sept. 16 bailed out the giant insurance company American International Group, or AIG, as "too big to fail" became a catchphrase of the rescue effort. Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke eventually would ask Congress for an emergency $700 billion financial bailout.

The economy was not McCain's forte. Even as the crisis deepened, McCain continued to repeat a stock stump line of his about the strength of the "fundamentals" of the economy. And even if the economy had been his expertise, voters saw Bush and the Republicans as responsible for the crisis.

According to an archive of 2008 polls maintained by the RealClearPolitics website, McCain had small leads over Obama in four consecutive public polls after the Republican National Convention. He would maintain narrow leads in two more polls after that. But no poll after the week of Sept. 21— as the economy spiraled down — showed McCain with a lead.

Understanding the stakes, McCain made the remarkable decision to suspend his campaign for two days so he could return to Capitol Hill to address the financial crisis. It was another "maverick" move that would show his commitment to putting the health of the country over his personal political interests. The only problem: McCain had no clear idea what to do about the economy and already was a latecomer to negotiations over the proposed $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

"I asked, 'Are you sure that you want to do that?' Because nobody knows how this is going to work out," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., a McCain ally who'd spoken by telephone with McCain, told The Republic at the time. "But you know John. He's willing to take big risks if he thinks it's for a big cause."

The timing was particularly perilous because he risked forfeiting his first debate with Obama, which was set for Sept. 26, 2008, at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. After McCain announced he was returning to Washington, D.C., Obama went back, too.

In a Sept. 24 joint statement, McCain and Obama agreed the crisis meant Republicans and Democrats had to work together for the American people.

"The plan that has been submitted to Congress by the Bush Administration is flawed, but the effort to protect the American economy must not fail," the White House rivals said. "This is a time to rise above politics for the good of the country. We cannot risk an economic catastrophe. Now is our chance to come together to prove that Washington is once again capable of leading this country."

A subsequent, combative Sept. 25 White House meeting that included Bush, McCain, Obama and other congressional leaders yielded no deal. Footage of McCain silently sitting at the table didn't help his image as having a poor grasp on economic issues. McCain also was under pressure from his fellow congressional Republicans not to make the situation worse for them. House Republicans were also on the ballot in November, and they worried their party's presidential nominee might throw them under the bus by savaging whatever bailout package emerged from the discussions.

Quoting sources, CNN reported that McCain said little during the White House summit and didn't say anything for the first 43 minutes.

"One of the concerns I've had over the last several days is that when you start injecting presidential politics into delicate negotiations, then you can actually create more problems rather than less," Obama said on CNN.

Paulsen, Bush's Treasury secretary, later ripped McCain's role in the proceedings, saying the GOP candidate's decision to elbow his way into the bailout discussions without a plan was "impulsive and risky" and "dangerous."

"When it came right down to it, (McCain) had little to say in the forum he himself had called," Paulsen wrote in "On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System," a 2009 book.

McCain later would tell The Republic that it was Bush who had called him in from the campaign trail. According to McCain's later account, made to the newspaper's editorial board in February 2010, Bush asked for his help to avoid a looming worldwide economic disaster.

"I don't know of any American, when the president of the United States calls you and tells you something like that, who wouldn't respond," McCain said. "And I came back and tried to sit down and work with Republicans and say, 'What can we do?' "

McCain eventually went along with the TARP bailout, a vote that would haunt him for years.

Debates carry high stakes

The first presidential debate in Mississippi went off as planned. And it was there that McCain truly may have lost the election.

It wasn't because of McCain's performance, which was solid if a little stiff and abrasiveat times. Except for some discussion of the economic crisis, the debate focused on national security and foreign policy, two issues in McCain's comfort zone. Some observers said McCain may have won the debate on points, some said Obama won outright, while still others said it was probably no worse for McCain than a draw.

The problem for McCain was that a draw was all Obama needed, so that effectively made him the winner. Given the economic anxiety and Obama's lack of seasoning, the McCain campaign's last hope was that Americans might not want to risk the presidency on someone so untested. McCain needed Obama to fumble.

Instead, Obama held his own against McCain and delivered a calm and collected performance that put to rest worries about his light experience.

"I think they pretty much did equally well in what they said," Paul Levinson, a Fordham University communications professor and expert on presidential debates, told The Republic after the event. "On the non-verbal level, Barack Obama was much better. He looked relaxed. He smiled at times. He seemed confident."

Meanwhile, Palin's limitations as a national candidate had become apparent. Though she had managed to get through the convention and had won acclaim for her speech, she was not ready to address policy.

Palin was responsible for resuscitating the McCain campaign in the polls — their ticket had surged past Obama and Biden — but after the convention, McCain aides didn't know what to do with her. She was largely sequestered from the media, keeping her away from hard-hitting questions about foreign policy she couldn't answer. NBC's "Saturday Night Live" mocked her mercilessly. "SNL" star Tina Fey's spot-on impersonation defined her in the public consciousness. To this day, many Americans believe it was Palin that said "I can see Russia from my house" when in fact it came from one of Fey's send-ups of her.

The real test came when Palin started giving interviews to high-profile journalists such as Katie Couric of CBS News.

She failed that test and bombed, famously bungling even a softball question about what newspapers and magazines she would read to keep up with world events.

"I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media," Palin said. "Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years."

In her book, "Going Rogue," Palin wrote that Couric's goal was to capture what Palin characterized as "gotcha" moments and conceded that Couric's strategy worked.

"Instead of my scoring points for John McCain, I knew that I had let the team down," Palin wrote.

In another headache for the McCain-Palin ticket that would foreshadow liabilities for future political campaigns, Palin's email account was hacked and her messages and family photos were made public.

By the time Palin was set to face off against Biden in the Oct. 2 vice-presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, many McCain insiders were bracing for a disaster.

While she was outmatched from the start on policy by the veteran senator from Delaware, and let Biden land far too many blows against McCain, Palin managed to survive the political high-wire act. It could have been much worse, and McCain campaign officials largely breathed a collective sigh of relief.

She even contributed some memorable, if odd, moments, such as when she repeatedly winked at the camera and when she asked Biden, "Hey, can I call you Joe?"

Sprinting to Election Day

McCain and Obama would share the stage two more times, in Nashville and Long Island, N.Y., though neither debate would move the needle.

Obama was seen as the winner of the second debate. In the third, McCain seemed most comfortable and was at his best. Still, he wasn't able to do much damage to Obama, despite bringing up Obama's ties to William Ayers, a former leader of the violent Weather Underground Organization, and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which was under fire at the time in a voter-registration controversy.

The third debate, held Oct. 15 at New York's Hofstra University, is perhaps best remembered for McCain making "Joe the Plumber" a short-lived household name.

The plumber in question, Joe Wurzelbacher, had questioned Obama on the campaign trail near Toledo, Ohio. He told Obama he wanted to buy a plumbing business that could make as much as $280,000, which would put him over Obama's $250,000 limit for tax protection and relief for small businesses. "When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," Obama told Wurzelbacher.

"Joe, I want to tell you, I'll not only help you buy that business that you worked your whole life for and I'll keep your taxes low and I'll provide available and affordable health care for you and your employees," McCain promised from the debate stage. To Obama, he said: "And what you want to do to Joe the Plumber and millions more like him is have their taxes increased and not be able to realize the American dream of owning their own business."

By the second half of October, though, it seemed as if McCain's fate was sealed. He still struggled to connect with voters on the economy, the most important issue of the day. Undecided voters seemed to break for Obama.

"I feel like we got a righteous wind at our backs here," Obama said while campaigning in Virginia.

McCain seemed aware of the cultural significance of his race against the first African-American presidential nominee. He had found himself, at times, defending Obama from members of his own town-hall audiences, suggesting an awareness of how history might look back on his campaign. At an Oct. 10 event, McCain reassured a man that he had nothing to fear should Obama, "a decent person," become president. He also corrected a woman who said she couldn't trust Obama because he was "an Arab."

"No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about," McCain said.

No matter how bleak the outlook, McCain did not give up, campaigning hard to the very last minute. The day before the election, McCain stumped in no fewer than seven states before concluding with a midnight rally at the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse in Prescott. He cast his vote in Phoenix before campaigning some more in Colorado and New Mexico.

If he had won, it would have been one of the most remarkable come-from-behind victories of all time.

'Never meant to be'

When the votes were counted on Nov. 4, 2008, Obama was the president-elect and McCain was the also-ran.

It wasn't close: Obama won the popular vote 52.9 percent to 45.6 percent and carried the Electoral College 365 to 173.

In his gracious concession speech, McCain spoke of "the special significance" that Obama's win held for African-Americans and "for the special pride that must be theirs tonight." He was joined on stage by his wife, Cindy, and Palin and her husband, Todd.

"A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time," McCain said at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. "There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth."

McCain's long quest for the White House was over. This time, for good.

In retrospect, McCain certainly made mistakes — some big, some not so big — that damaged his competitiveness. His response to the economic crisis clearly backfired. Many voters saw his return to the Senate as a stunt. There's still an argument about whether his gamble on Palin as a running mate helped him enough with his base to offset how much she hurt him with independents. Perhaps he should have been more aggressive in distancing himself from the politically radioactive Bush.

And for all of McCain's effort to court the Latino vote, Obama clobbered him among that demographic, too, 67 percent to 31 percent. A Latino running mate from a swing state, rather than Palin from Alaska, might have helped, though McCain could never reflect the country's changing demographics the way Obama did.

The hopes of McCain's campaign hinged largely on Obama making rookie mistakes. Not only did Obama not make such mistakes, he ran a much-emulated, highly disciplined campaign that was able to raise unprecedented amounts of money.

The bottom line, though, is that after eight years of the Bush administration, war-fatigued voters were ready to give the Democrats a shot. It was an impulse that would be all but impossible for McCain, or any GOP candidate, to reverse.

A USA TODAY/Gallup poll gauged Bush's approval rating on Election Day 2008 at just 25 percent.

"Look, he didn't run the best campaign that we've ever seen, but no Republican could have won this year," Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election. "You can't win with conditions this bad for the incumbent party. And that's McCain's consolation: He did reasonably well under extremely difficult conditions. It was never meant to be."

NEXT CHAPTER: 'Complete the danged fence,' John McCain proclaims

John McCain's American Story

Chapter 1: John McCain a study in contradiction
Chapter 2: John McCain was destined for the Naval Academy
Chapter 3: John McCain was 'a very determined guy' as a POW
Chapter 4: John McCain's political ambition emerged after POW return
Chapter 5: John McCain's political career began after Arizona move
Chapter 6: Ever-ambitious, John McCain rises to the Senate
Chapter 7: John McCain 'in a hell of a mess' with Keating Five
Chapter 8: After Keating Five, John McCain faced new scandal
Chapter 9: John McCain becomes the 'maverick'
Chapter 10: 'Ugly' politics in John McCain's 2000 presidential run
Chapter 11: John McCain was frequent foe of Bush in early years
Chapter 12: John McCain goes establishment for 2nd White House run
Chapter 13: John McCain had rough start to 2008 presidential race
Chapter 14: John McCain clinches 2008 GOP presidential nomination
Chapter 15: John McCain takes on Obama for president in 2008
Chapter 16: John McCain fails in second bid for president
Chapter 17: 'Complete the danged fence,' John McCain proclaims
Chapter 18: John McCain wins 6th term, reclaims 'maverick' label

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Source: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2018/04/02/john-mccain-loses-2008-presidential-election-barack-obama-wins-2008-election/825774001/

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