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McCain's Arkansas arrival Saturday, Jul 19, 2008 By Doug Thompson Arkansas Republicans will get a reminder next month that there's a race they can win. GOP presidential nominee-apparent Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is coming to Northwest Arkansas on Aug. 8, the state Republican Party announced Friday. The most recent polls show him leading this state by large margins. There's been a lot of speculation about why McCain has that lead. Is it because Democratic nominee-apparent Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., defeated former Arkansas first lady Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., in the Democratic primary? Is Obama too liberal? Is race involved? Call me simplistic. I think McCain's lead might have something to do with Arkansas being so conservative that it has gone Republican in every presidential election during my adult life unless the Democratic nominee was named Clinton. Democrat Mike Beebe's election as governor was an important turning point for Democrats. No doubt about it. However, state politics and Arkansas presidential politics are two entirely - if strangely - different things. This state was voting for Richard Nixon for president when Dale Bumpers was winning as governor by landslide margins. Statewide organization for Obama here is glaringly absent. The caveat to that is that state-level organization for McCain is glaringly absent just about anywhere you can go. Somebody needs to point out that the Republican Party still has an impressive database of likely Republican voters that's compiled from things from voting records and donations to interest groups to certain magazine subscriptions. There's a list for Arkansas too. That database is about to get a serious culling. A lot of people who are conservative by nature are very disappointed lately. We'll see how many turn out for this election in Arkansas, especially with no U.S. Senate nominee. Still, the list that's left will be a valuable one of true believers. You could interpret McCain as the Republican who beat our former governor, Mike Huckabee, I suppose. The chilliness that you find among hard-driving Hillary supporters isn't there, though. McCain's not Arkansas Republicans' ideal choice. Start with his immigration policy and his less-than-fanatical record on U.S. Supreme Court nominations. Still, he's not Obama. That appears to be enough. Could Obama turn Arkansas around? I don't think so. Frankly, I think he has better places to spend his time and money, despite his much-ballyhooed "50 state strategy." The only advantage of that pretense is to keep your opponent guessing about where you're really going to concentrate your effort. Oh, and about Obama's vote to grant retroactive immunity to phone companies who cooperated in illegal domestic spying. All the talk is that Obama didn't want to leave himself vulnerable on national security issues. What bunk. That vote was all about fund raising. Obama didn't want to lose ground there by scaring any CEOs toward McCain with an anti-corporate vote. He also didn't want to scare his many yuppie contributors who work in tall buildings and still fly commercial. Speaking of national security, perhaps Obama should name a running mate with defense experience and credibility. Of course, the last time we went that route we got Dick Cheney. It makes me wonder: What's Colin Powell doing these days? Whenever anybody brings up race in this election, I reply that I would have voted for Powell in a minute, at least before he cashed in his credibility to help get us in the Iraq War. I don't know if Powell would ever want to get into election politics. I do see in news accounts that Obama and McCain are courting him. You have to be careful, though, on how much to read into this stuff. It would be dumb for either candidate not to avail themselves of a former secretary of state and chief of the general staff. Powell's also one of the least-discredited - if that's any recommendation - former members of the Bush administration. Powell was a good soldier. That was his downfall. He followed his orders too well and sold us on the war against his better judgment. He was credible. I don't think we would have gone to Iraq without his recommendation. That's a very, very heavy burden to carry through history. Powell can never shed it. The using-up of Colin Powell is a great tragedy of race and presidential politics of early 21st century America. He should have been the first black president. Ultimately, he was the outsider. The president's clique was glad to be rid of him. The president's clique has and will suffer greatly for it, not in the least because they should have listened to Powell's misgivings on Iraq. I don't think Powell can run with Obama. He would be under too much pressure to tell what he knew as secretary of state. There's too much loyalty - however misplaced - in Powell's DNA to go there. --------- Doug Thompson is a Fayetteville-based reporter and columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and the Morning News. His e-mail address is dthompson@arkansasnews.com. |
