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Senator McCain may find a blueprint for success a bit closer to home. Ronald Reagan effectively ran not only against Carter but also against Johnson, Nixon, and Ford by using the "Decade of Weakness" argument.
This argument was crafted by a diverse range of individuals and groups in American political and strategic culture. The argument suggested that detente was a failed approach to U.S.-Soviet relations that allowed the Communists to increase its numerical superiority in conventional weapons systems and to engage in covert and clandestine operations in the third world.
The argument was especially adroit for two reasons. First, it enabled Reagan to talk about the Vietnam War indirectly. Second, because it generally never mentioned Nixon, Ford, or Kissinger even though it was as much a repudiation of Kissinger's approach to foreign policy as anything. Instead, it cast President Carter as embodiment of America's decline in the international arena. Ironically, the argument agreed with Carter by placing human rights as a higher priority for national security policy.
The Decade of Weakness argument remained an effective political tool even after Reagan's victory in 1980. Well into his presidency, officials in the Reagan administration, in particular the secretary of defense, presented plans for rearmament within the argument's context in numerous speeches.* In 2004, during his speech at the RNC, President Bush actually referred to the decade of weakness as a reason why American should stay the course in Iraq.
* Drafts of these speeches can be found at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, WHORM FG013 (Department of Defense), boxes 1-3.
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