it's the narrative, stupid

(Image by Thomas Roche used under a Creative Commons license.)

This campaign has been about two, competing narratives: change vs. experience. Is that a simplistic, stupid way of looking at politics and governance? Sure thing. But that's been the story of the election. Which do those mythic swing voters like better? Since it is essentially conventional wisdom that swing voters care nothing for policy and only about character and identity politics, that has been the question of this election. Change or experience?

If the panel on today's Chris Matthew's show, several bloggers and pundits I admire, and some op/ed columnists are to be believed, the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency isn't happening in a vacuum, but is part of a larger change for the McCain campaign "back to the roots". McCain campaigned in 2000 as a "reformer with results"; the maverick label, so lovingly crafted and perpetuated by the press, is his calling card; and he appears personally to detest the "voice of experience" title that has been applied to him this election cycle. The Palin pick, for all of its obvious (I would say shameless) political appeal, is supposed to also be a bold statement from McCain about where his real political identity lies.

Fair enough. It's his campaign and he can run it however he chooses. Many think this was a brilliant choice for McCain. The reaction to this pick from the conservative blogosphere has been almost total glee.

But I see only trouble for McCain here. I don't think he can appropriate the change narrative. Not this year, not with this opponent. The incumbent party will always have a hard time winning a change election. Against Barack Obama? Whatever else is true, Obama has more claim to outsider status and the change appeal than John McCain. By a long shot.

I think the Joe Biden nomination was equally dispiriting to people who actually believed in Obama's call for change. But I see no signal from the Obama camp that the Biden selection represented a sea change for the central message of the campaign. Certainly, the convention speech would have been the place to make such a change clear. Biden instead seems like a nod to ticket balancing and appeasing the old guard, as distasteful as that is to me. McCain's choice to me bodes at least a confused narrative, and perhaps a wholesale shift.

I could be wrong. McCain could keep flogging the "experience" narrative, though I don't see how Palin contributes anything to that. I think it's a mistake, following 8 years of Bush and Iraq, with a grim economy, to run implicitly on continuity. But it's an argument McCain can win. The change argument? I just don't see it.

PS I'm already really tired of hearing the term "hockey mom."
PPS Everybody recognizes the sexism inherent in the appeal to women, right? Isn't the idea that women voters, in mass, will say "Why, a woman for a VP candidate? Forget ideology, sign me up!"? Pretty insulting.

Update: This, from Kinsley, is perfect.