How a ‘Nation of Whiners’ Struck Back

In 1992, for Bill Clinton, it was the economy, stupid. In 2008, for John McCain, it was the stupid economy. Exit polls showed that 62 percent of the electorate said the economy was the most important issue.

But when, precisely, did John McCain lose the narrative on the economy? Was it in July, when adviser Phil Gramm, discussing the "mental recession," noted that "we've sort of become a nation of whiners"? Perhaps it was back in December 2007, when McCain said, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well I should." Or was McCain's economic goose cooked long before the campaigns started? Ray Fair, the Yale professor who plugs macroeconomic data into an election-predicting model, said, "Since November 2006, the model has consistently been predicting that the Democratic candidate would get about 52 percent of the two-party vote."

McCain managed to give Obama a run for the money through mid-September. But the polls began to turn against him when the global financial system suffered a run on the money. And with the acuity bestowed by six weeks of hindsight, I think it's possible to pinpoint three dates—Sept. 15, Sept. 24 and Oct. 15—that mark crucial economic turning points.

On Sept. 15, Lehman Brothers, having failed to convince the government it was worthy of a bailout, filed for bankruptcy. The same day, McCain proclaimed: "I think, still the fundamentals of our economy are strong." A twin killer. Lehman's failure triggered a ferocious and unpredictable series of events—the freezing of money-market funds, a global credit seizure—that made it clear that (a) the fundamentals of our economy were anything but strong, and (b) volatility was here to stay. McCain's ill-timed line, a longtime presidential staple, showed he lacked an intuitive Clintonesque feel for how to talk about the economy at large, or about the crisis at hand. In early October, McCain adviser Greg Strimple said the campaign was "looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis" so it could resume tarring Obama as a danger to the republic. But the page turned only onto new pages filled with ultragloomy reports on growth and car sales.

On Sept. 24, as talks about a Washington bailout intensified, McCain announced he would suspend his campaign and fly to Washington. The theory: McCain would put country first, force Obama off the campaign trail, forge a bipartisan compromise and alter the dynamics of the race. The reality: McCain didn't have a game plan to triangulate effectively between the Republican gentry (the Bush administration, Wall Street, corporate America) who ardently demanded a bailout, and the pitchfork-toting peasants (House Republicans). He left town and resumed campaigning without an agreement in place.

While McCain seemed detached, Obama caucused with financial graybeards and let NEWSWEEK know that he kept his campaign plane on the tarmac to get updates from his new speed-dialing buddy, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. And the passage of the bailout bill, which McCain grudgingly supported in the end, neutered the GOP's increasingly ideological economic warfare. At a time when the Bush administration was nationalizing big portions of the (grateful) financial-services sector, charges that Obama was a socialist, the redistributor in chief, the second coming of Eugene V. Debs, failed to gain traction.

The third, fatal date? Oct. 15, the third debate. Throughout the fall, Obama corraled financial icons like former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker and Warren Buffett as surrogates to reassure investors that Obama could steer the nation through treacherous financial shoals. Rather than rely on a respected business person like Mitt Romney or former eBay CEO Meg Whit-man, McCain turned to an unlicensed plumber from Ohio. McCain mentioned "Joe the Plumber" seven times in the Oct. 15 debate. In the ensuing weeks, McCain routinely trotted out Samuel J. Wurzelbacher's economic folk wisdom as gospel.

In an economic smackdown between Warren the Investor and Joe the Plumber, the odds would be stacked against the Republican. Given the nation's parlous finances, the odds of McCain's winning a campaign that turned on economics would be almost as long.