The Power of Biography

Bill Kristol isn’t wrong when he says that biography alone can’t make you President, or that the candidate with the longer resume often winds up the loser. With that said, I don’t think McCain’s “bio tour” is getting the respect it deserves.

One of the greatest single misconceptions about campaigns are, or should be, purely a contest of issues. In a model Athenian city-state run by philosopher-kings, sure. But most people don’t have the time to devote to politics that blog readers like us do. In practice, people thin-slice the candidates. They quickly hone in on basic attributes and make snap decisions about a candidate’s fitness for office. Don’t dismiss this as intellectual laziness. Collectively, these common sense, wisdom-of-crowds judgments can be far more accurate and cut through the clutter far better than a readout of candidate talking points.

Biography is a powerful key that validates everything else a candidate says. It’s not the only thing, but when it’s aligned with a candidate’s issue positions and with the mood of the country, it can be a powerful force.

Kristol’s examples of previous “bio” candidates — George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, and John Kerry — all failed to meet this criteria.

George H.W. Bush’s war hero record aligned perfectly with his foreign policy credentials and helped elect him in 1988. By 1992, however, Bush’s bio had been rendered obsolete by the end of the Cold War and pent-up energy around domestic issues. 1992, like Britain 1945, was a “gold watch” election in which the war hero wartime leader was retired in the transition to peacetime.

Four years later, running a war hero was even more jarring. We were deep into our holiday from history. The only conceivable use of military power at the time was the quick airstrike to dislodge some two-bit human rights abuser. Bob Dole’s biography was moving, but running on a 50-year-old war record in a peacetime election was a nonstarter.

John Kerry’s case is interesting. A generation from now, we will probably look back on the 2004 election as the archetypical wartime election of the last 50 years. The problem for Kerry wasn’t that his bio didn’t align with the times. It’s that it was utterly inconsistent with virtually everything Kerry did after he got back from Vietnam.

As Kerry learned, you can’t run as the anti-war war hero. The whiplash positioning was jarring to most Americans, feeding perceptions of Kerry as an opportunistic flip-flopper. Most importantly, his fellow veterans turned their back on Kerry as a turncoat, leading to the swift boat crisis that canceled out any effort to qualify Kerry based on his bio. And while Kerry had a military background, he didn’t exhibit the consistency and decisiveness expected of military men.

McCain’s case is different. He is running as a war hero with a hawkish positions in a wartime election. His positioning is consistent. The keys are all turned in the same direction.

But wait? Isn’t this a “change” election? Won’t it look more like ‘92 than ‘04?

Actually, it’s probably a weird hybrid that will look like neither. Just like ‘00 was a strange election that married the change impulse post-Lewinsky with a “don’t rock the boat” mentality surrounding the booming economy, ‘08 is a strange election that marries a desire for seriousness in uncertain, dangerous times (McCain, Clinton) with the sense that we need a clean break (Obama).

Indeed, Obama’s bio — fresh, different, multiethnic — has plugged in to the change leitmotif perfectly, just as perfectly as McCain tapped the security message in the Republican primary. (Romney tried to run as a “change” candidate, and lost.) Obama is winning because Democratic voters are focused on change, and McCain won because Republican voters were focused on security. But within the Democratic primary, Hillary is playing the security card and could wind up with a plurality of the popular vote.

As he aims to sell the security/seriousness storyline, McCain’s bio is nothing but an asset because it validates the narrative. The key is synergy. Unlike past “bio” candidates, McCain is not trying to run as a war hero while justifying anti-war positions or struggling to explain why a miliary record would be relevant.

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