McCain and the Identity Politics of the Right

As I wrote last night, the activist right-wing will never accept John McCain because of the power of identity politics among conservatives. McCain may agree with a lot of conservative positions, but the conservative movement will never embrace McCain because he isn't "one of them."

There are several dimensions on which McCain is a stranger to the right. Here's a couple.

MCCAIN'S REASSERTION OF TRADITIONAL MASCULINITY. The most important cultural achievement of the conservative movement has been the temporary enshrinement of weenie-boy masculinity as the dominant mode of political manhood. Painfully conscious of their own failures in terms of conventional ideals of male athleticism and big man on campus popularity, conservatives like George Bush, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, and Tom DeLay adapted a comic book ideal of exaggerated masculine gestures and promoted that ideal to the public as what "real" masculinity was all about. Selling George Bush as more of a man than more conventionally masculine guys like Al Gore and John Kerry was one of the keys to his victories in 2000 and 2008.

But John McCain is just as far from the weenie world of right-wing masculinity as any liberal democrat. A jock, fighter-pilot, and all-around cool guy, McCain doesn't need, understand, or have any respect for the hyper-masculine posturing of the activist right. That's why McCain has been such good buddies with guys like John Kerry. He shares a kind of ease with masculine give and take that somebody like Rush Limbaugh wouldn't be able to achieve if he had 100 million listeners rather than 13 million.

To put it crudely, John McCain just isn't the same kind of man Limbaugh and the other weenies of the right. Even worse, McCain is a constant reminder to the right of the kind of men they aren't.

MCCAIN MINUS THE RACIAL/GENDER NARRATIVES. Figures like William Bennett argue that Barack Obama "transcends race." That's nonsense. At the Obama event I attended in Lexington, KY last fall, there was a strong, specifically African-American presence. There were a lot more African-Americans in the audience than there are at most Kentucky political events. A couple of black students from local high schools also came forward to give short speeches and an African-American music student from the University of Kentucky gave a powerhouse rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Obama was definitely running as "the black candidate" as well as the candidate of the whites in the audience. Indeed, Obama's living multi-culturalism was part of the excitement of the event.

However, there's going to be a very real sense that John McCain is going to be transcending "whiteness," or at least the traditional Republican version of whiteness, in the general election campaign. Republican presidential candidates from Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush have been running as specifically white men who have been promising to oppose the aspirations of black people, keep black people under control, or find ways to keep black people "in their place." I believe it was Howard Kurtz who captured the Republican spirit when he stressed that the GOP candidates as the first presidential debate of the 2008 election represented "hierarchy."

To my knowledge, however, McCain has no racial narrative in his campaigning. Seemingly outside the debates over segregation and integration, McCain doesn't support the Confederate
flag, hasn't made a point of campaigning against "activist judges," doesn't have a big crime agenda directed against black males, and isn't a big opponent of affirmative action. In other words, McCain isn't trying to rally Republican voters around white supremacy or the many stand-ins for white supremacy that Republicans have been promoting for the last 40 years going back to Nixon.

I have a lot of doubt that McCain is going to push hatred of Muslims, hatred of gay people, hatred of Hispanics, or hatred of women in the form of anti-Hillary stereotypes if he runs against Hillary. Given the absence of bigotry, a McCain presidential campaign "just isn't going to feel like a Republican campaign" to a lot of right-wingers. Once again, McCain isn't one of them.