After watching reruns of John McCain’s acceptance speech last night the biggest question I have is can he govern. For his entire career McCain has been a maverick, daring to go against even his own President and his own party. It was not that long ago that the Republican Right said John McCain would never be President if they had anything to say about it. Not long ago Washington was full of rumors McCain might even cross the line.

Last night the lukewarm sheers and even dead silence indicated the Republican Right is about as reconciled to McCain as the PUMAs are to Barack Obama. So what lessons can we draw from McCain’s victory and what does the crystal ball tell us about a possible McCain Presidency?

A Broken Process

Both parties ended up with nominees that the Party mainstream neither expected nor strongly supported. The Democratic Leadership Council types who, like it or not, have controlled the Party for the last two decades strongly supported Hillary Clinton. Her politics were their politics. Instead they ended up with Barack Obama after a bitter fight where the wounds have still yet to heal.

On the Republican side the base was searching for someone actively willing to support the Counterrevolution and the members of its coalition–the die-hard, laissez-faire business types, the religious right, the closet Southern Dixiecrats, the media moguls and the suburban conservatives. The most logical candidates–Thompson and Huckabee–never caught on. Giuliani and Romney were as suspect as McCain. They also were Easterners, which makes them citizens of a foreign country to the Republican base.

So why did this happen? One word: primaries. The reliance on the primary system has now essentially taken the choice of the Presidential nominee out of the hands of the Party establishment. We’ve watched this develop over the last few decades, first with Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Reagan was not the first choice of the GOP establishment but his committed followers along with his grassroots organizing and obvious personal appeal won the day. For the Democrats Carter was followed by Dukakis and then Howard Dean.

Party regulars could be overridden by committed activists who owed nothing to the party. In addition the arcane primary rules in many states have become an accident waiting to happen. It is too easy for cross-overs and independents to sway the results. In a majority of the races won by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama it could be argued they supplied the winning margin.

So now we have a system in which either party is liable to find themselves saddled with a nominee they neither wanted nor expected. It would be easy to view this as an affirmation of “the people” but that is a myth the statistics do not support. The Democrat’s base essentially split between Clinton and Obama, leaving the outsiders to sway the results. On the GOP side the perfect storm caused by too many candidates with too many problems enabled the old Navy man John McCain to steer his ship safely through the waves.

The question of what to do should be on the minds of all Americans. As for the two parties, the primary system in part has served to prevent the emergence of a third party while saddling the existing parties with candidates who raise the question, can they govern.

McCain’s Devil’s Bargain

Although most of the mainstream press questions whether Barack Obama can govern, I have less doubts about him than I do of McCain. Obama has shown an ability to mobilize his supporters that brings back memories of Ronald Reagan. As with Reagan, a few Obama speeches and the telegrams will pour into Washington.

On the other hand, McCain has a different problem. When historians finally dissect the 2008 election, they may well find that the Republicans looked over at the donnybrook transpiring among the Democrats and said they wanted none of that. They also did not want either Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani–and Ron Paul was a loose cannon, a kind of Republican Ralph Nader.

So I will speculate that much like the Democrats in 2004, the GOP bigshots threw their weight behind one candidate. So doesn’t this contradict the wild primary theory? Not really. If the party base can unite behind a candidate that also has a fair amount of popular support they can still have an impact. In 2008 the Democrats could not do that. With Howard Dean running the Democratic National Committee and no friend of the Clintons, the Democratic establishment decided to let the candidates fight it out.

On the GOP side a different wisdom prevailed. Already weakened by the albatross of George W. Bush and fearing a backlash against the GOP, they knew the base had to make peace with someone.

John McCain began performing the obligatory gestures to satisfy the base, particularly the religious right he had once openly scorned and the Grover Norquist no taxes crowd he had infuriated.

Of course, these people are not stupid. Others like Romney and Giuliani were having their “conversions,” so it would take more than mere words to cut a real deal. At the top of the list was the Supreme Court, right behind which was the Vice Presidency and the GOP platform. So we ended up with Sarah Barracuda.

The Tightrope

This Devil’s Bargain will make it extremely difficult for john McCain to govern. He must perform the equivalent of a political high wire act that few if any Presidents have faced. Somehow he will have to walk a slippery rope between his rabid base and what is shaping up to be a Democratic Congress–or at best a narrow GOP majority.

McCain has successfully walked the tightrope before, but never was it this slippery or this high, for he managed the feat only on issues that were not at the top of either party’s bases. The GOP fanatics are already grumbling that George W. Bush, like his father, never accomplished the Counterrevolutionary agenda. The Democrats, having been tricked and arm-twisted into supporting Alito and the Iraq War, will not give in so easily this time.

Meanwhile the budget and foreign policy messes George W. Bush has left behind are already emitting a stench, the likes of which has never been seen in American history. To further complicate McCain’s task, the neocons want control of foreign policy and Norquist and the religious right want their pound of flesh.

Contrary to bringing us together a McCain Presidency has the potential to tear us apart. Like the government itself he just has too many debts to pay and not enough cash to pay for them. I am certain that some highly-placed Republicans have already told McCain that if he fails to carry out the bargain they will run Palin against him in 2012. Meanwhile with Obama losing what will be a brutal campaign with undertones of racism the Democrats, particularly on the left, will be out for blood.

The Wedge

A McCain victory would push a wedge between the left and right that will worsen rather than heal the Washington gridlock. A more pragmatic politician than McCain might cut a deal with the DLC and the Democratic Blue Dogs that might allow him to govern, but McCain is not one to break his bargain with the Counterrevolution.

If the wedge deepens the divisions, a lot of Americans will become even more fed up with the ideologues on both sides. We’ve had of culture wars before, but the only ones that approach this one are the struggles that put Andrew Jackson in the White House, the Civil War, and the battle between progressives and the tycoons at the turn of the nineteenth century. Jackson, Lincoln and Wilson made no bargains like McCain. You also are talking about three of our greatest Presidents. Instead McCain promises to be more like a Buchanan or a Taft, which also means he possibly will be a one-term President.

The Prognosis

The faces on the GOP delegates said it all: their support for John McCain is at best lukewarm. Throughout his somewhat rambling yet also moving speech they waited for him to throw them the red meat the Barracuda had served up the night before as if she could not wait to do to the liberals what she did to her enemies in Wasilla.

They never got what they wanted. They clapped and cheered, almost as if on cue. They won’t be so nice if John McCain takes up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

So ironically we have factions of both parties who hope the nominee loses. That will make for an interesting race. Maybe if the zealots sit this one out, we might just get through the culture wars.

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