Can McCain Rehabilitate His Image After the Election?

No. He's lost all credibility with his dirty Karl Rove-esque politics during this election. His behavior has been downright appalling:

- fear mongering
- failing to speak out against hateful speech during his rallies
- claiming Obama has terrorist ties
- saying that the economy is fundamentally strong
- selecting a complete idiot as a running mate
etc.

 

For the next 2 years, McCain will spend every ounce of energy he has trying to salvage his image. But I don't think a lot of people will be listening.

 

You folks are so wrong on this topic. If you knew the amount of damaging information that McCain has HELD BACK on, you'd be stunned. McCain has not once brought up Reverend Wright, for instance.

Baqui -- your list is 100% wrong. Good grief, you are clueless.

 

because nobody knows about this LOL

 

Of course he can. Have you forgotten that he made the ultimate sacrifice for you and me to be posting on this board? Once a POW, always a POW.

=)

 

John McCain was not the nominee of choice of the republican party machine. They would have preferred a more conventional conservative. The alliance was always uncomfortable and I think McCain to some degree had to succumb to the tactics of the entrenched campaign staff.

It would not surprise me that, when unshackled from them after the election McCain doesn't become a pretty good team player for bi-partisan pragmatism. He may have no other political choice sine he will be scapegoated for losing the election and the party will move on to new leadership.

 

more interesting to me than the question in the title of this thread is to whom the republicans will look to for leadership next....who would be their next presidential candidate.

 

Palin?

 

I would hope so. She's just further down the Rovian "excite the base" path that has failed so spectacularly.

That party is in complete shambles. It needs help.

 

Very likely and especially so if he can give a dignified concession speech and continue on his pre-election ways.

For one thing, Republicans don't discard their own Presidential failures like Democrats do. Another is that McCain has more Dem friends than Republican. And look at Hillary, after a bitterly fought campaign, she's still highly respected among her peers despite the threats of losing that reputation for prolonging the primaries..

Finally all parties will be interested on dumping the bitterness and acrimony on Palin. Whether because she's an easy target or because McCain is still a influential Senator to work with.

 

This is an open question and will take time. Several will jockey for position and it will take a couple of years to figure out. I would not assume it's Palin just because some have christened her as "the future of the party". Romey, Jindal and numerous others will have a lot to say in the matter.

 

No, he was the nominee of choice. Reluctantly, no doubt, he was the chosen one. All the others had too many liabilities... a preacher who had no allegiance to the party aristocracy, a Mormon who would be a bad fit with the base, a washed up actor who barely awoke from his coma to attend campaign events, or a NY City mayor who favored abortion and gays.

McCain was the only choice.

And to get to Max's question... another of the great failures of the Bush administration is that they bought into the Republican majority fiction so much that they failed to recruit and develop bench players. There's nobody on the horizon with the skill and intelligence to be a presidential candidate... W ruined the Bush name, so even though people are starting to whisper about Jeb, his national ambitions are shot and there's no other Bush out there

 

I think the GOP can win the whitehouse in 4 years, if not this year.

If Obama wins next week, expectations are so sky high for change and rainbows farted out of his butt that everyone will be disappointed by reality as he tries to clean up a million steaming cowpies at once. (My but I am scatalogical today.)

Anyway, hard to say with McCain. Bob Dole ran a very negative campaign in 1996; he reformed his image, regained a public sense of humor, but his political life was basically over.

McCain's campaign is more negative, more weird (Palin, "suspend" the campaign, etc), and in a much more volatile time.

If he and Obama can work together over the next four years, that'd do loads for both of their images and careers.

 

I don't see that he has a major problem with Republicans or his own constituency. If some Obama supporters don't respect him anymore, does it much matter? For my part, I think my respect for him has grown through this campaign, despite the electioneering stuff (which I tend to write-off to the process).

The big question I think is if Palin's image can be salvaged. Some people have called her the future of the party, but that can't be so. Too many people think she's an idiot and a drag on McCain's campaign. She's the new Quayle. I'd think her time in national politics is done and her career in Alaska is hurt (but probably still okay).

 

John McCain is toast after this election and I'm glad. I wouldn't have said that before the campaign, but I certainly do now. He'll be finished and eventually making Viagra commercials, hopping up and down on his toes and waving his arms around on a beach somewhere. And John won't do it for the money, because he doesn't need it... he'll do it for the attention.

 

Jeb Bush.

 

Policies aside, one of the best things that could come out with McCain or Obama winning is the fact that there would not be a string of Clinton's and Bush's as President.

There's already 20 years of a Bush & Clinton administration. If Hillary won you could potentially have 28 years. If Jeb Bush runs after that and wins thats possibly another 36 years.

America needs a shake up.

 

Not only is McCain's political career effectively over after this, his legacy has been altered irreparably. Before 2004, his legacy was one of being a stand-up guy, going against his party lines, following his moral compass and standing up to the smear campaigns of his own party. Ever since he lost the primary in 2004, he's compromised almost everything that made him different, all in the name of getting elected. He's become the monster he used to abhor.

He'll be remember as just another GOP mouthpiece instead of being remembered as the man who tried to change things.