RSS Feed MenuThirteen years ago, I followed Phil Gramm for 10 days for The Atlantic. Along the way, he had an encounter with a local football star now running for Congress: JD Hayworth. Gramm offered some good advice on how to run against an incumbent. The encounter appeared in the story. It irritated Hayworth, who mentioned it to me when I sat beside him at a breakfast literally ten years later.
Shortly before the November 8 congressional election Gramm made a campaign appearance in behalf of a young Republican congressional challenger in Arizona. He listened to the young man deliver a bombastic, foolish speech and afterward took him aside for some unsweetened advice. “There are only two issues when running against an incumbent,” he said. “Her record, and I’m not a kook. Forget the feel-good stuff. Say, This is her record; this is what I’m for. If a subject can’t elect you to Congress, don’t talk about it.”
Hayworth won that race. Now he is taking aim at another incumbent: Senator John McCain. This time he is promising to run a positive campaign, one that does not attack the incumbent’s record. He told Byron York:
Hayworth was careful not to say anything directly critical of McCain, but his words seemed calculated to send the message that McCain’s time is past. “I think we all respect John as a historical figure,” Hayworth told me. “The question is, who is best prepared to represent Arizona with a consistent, commonsense philosophy in the U.S. Senate?”
Since Hayworth called McCain a “historical figure,” I asked whether Hayworth might go after McCain on the age issue — McCain would be 74 years old when sworn in for a new term in January 2011. “Let me stress, it’s not about age,” Hayworth said. “I’m not on that kick. It’s not age, it’s time in office, and I think there’s just a feeling that people want to see a U.S. senator not only from Arizona, but for Arizona. I have a lot of respect for John, and if I decide to run, I will be running for the U.S. Senate, not against John McCain.”
We’ll see how long that lasts.
franco 2 // Jan 27, 2010 at 6:29 am
Question for Frum – if he even reads comments – and everyone else: Why the hell shouldn’t age be an issue? Everywhere else, in the military, in civil service in the private sector, there is a mandatory retirement age.
Look at what is happening to our government under these doddering old fools in the Senate. Age should be an issue and JD should come out and say it. I also question what type of man that needs to stay in power till he dies.
What exactly is wrong with retirement?
If the job of Senator is so easy any octogenarian can do it, something is wrong.
blowtorch_bob // Jan 27, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Why not target McCain’s “war hero” status. Because what did he really do? He was dropping explosives on civilian targets when the North Vietnamese had the unmitigated gall to shoot his plane down.
Kind of like the Luftwaffe campaign against London during the Battle of Britian. Yet if a Luffwaffe pilot turned German politician was proclaimed a “war hero” on the campaign trail the media over here would be up in arms.
rbottoms // Jan 27, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Apparently another rule is pander to your birther base.
Later in the segment, which aired Tuesday night on MSNBC’s Hardball, Hayworth said the responsibility for producing evidence should fall directly on Obama.
“I’m just saying the president should come forward with the information, that’s all. Why must we depend on the governor of Hawaii?”
Coincidentally, Tuesday was original scheduled to be the first hearing date for Barnett v. Obama in U.S. District Court. The case would have challenged Obama’s citizenship, but was thrown out by Judge David O. Carter without going to trial.
The GOP, still crazy after all these years.
Carney // Jan 27, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Blowtorch Bob, I am no McCainiac, but your comparison is disgustingly, contemptibly unjust.
The Blitz was indiscriminate terror-bombing of civilians, designed to break morale.
But McCain, like other aviators over Vietnam, was strictly restricted to specific military targets, often chosen by the White House or even Johnson personally, with orders and rules of engagement that maximized the risk to him in order to minimize the risk to Hanoi civilians, such as flying low and slow over the most heavily defended airspace on Earth. Even worse, the pinprick airstrikes that he and his fellow aviators suffered so greatly to carry out were often quickly repaired.
The irony is that many of the targets, such as bridges, could have been flattened beyond repair with a single salvo from an Iowa class battleship (whose guns could range up to 23 miles inland), but in a reversal of the prior generation, the Navy was dominated by carrier admirals who hated battleships.
canadianmoderate // Jan 27, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Hayworth still has some doubts about whether or not Obama’s American. Seriously. McCain should be able to run on Hayworth’s silliness alone. But even McCain needs the crazies to win. Sad.