The Fear Factor: What McCain Could Say, But Almost Certainly Won't

McCain Campaign Manager: Terrorist Attack Would Help Campaign

--CNN (link)

Announcer: Ladies and Gentlemen, Senator McCain (applause).

Senator McCain: My fellow Americans, I understand that my Campaign Manager has said that a terrorist attack would be good for my campaign. I have been asked whether I endorse these views. I can answer in two ways. The first answer is purely technical, operational: is it a fact that a terrorist attack would be good for my campaign? The fact is that no one knows. It might be, if it frightened Americans, and if they believed I could better relieve their fright. It might not, if the voters took it as evidence of a failure of Republican leadership in the war on terror.

But let that be. The point is (and this is my second answer)—I don’t want to win the election that way, even if I can. Mine is a campaign of hope, not of fear: a campaign of promise, not of suspicion; a campaign of daring, not of caution. I am in this race to mobilize the energy, the great sense of purpose of the American people—and, yes, their resilience, even in the face of misfortune.

I think there are good reasons to vote for me in November, and I hope you will be persuaded to do so. But fear is not a good reason. If you fear terrorist attack, and if you are driven by fear, vote for somebody else. If you have—as I have—confidence in the American people, and hope for our future, then vote for me.

The devilish part of this speech is that it is so sneaky and deceptive: give this speech and McCain gets all the fear vote anyway—because he reminds then that he is the candidate who will comfort them in their fears. But he would leave Democrats stripped and deprived of their opportunity to mock him for campaigning on the fear platform.,

The Democrats should wake up every morning giving thanks that they have so backward-looking and unimaginative an opponent.