The issue ultimately, is that the very thing that enabled McCain to do as well as he has been doing is the thing that has prevented him from winning--the war, of course. The economy drove the stake in the final few inches, but he was dying anyway.
I think he has been brilliant, utterly brilliant, to get this close, and to stay this close this deep into the campaign. For all her failures, I think Palin was an inspired choice as a running mate--which is not a comment on her abilities as a Vice President. The problem is not that he needed a cross-over VP, no Republican on Earth could do that more than he himself could have.
He squeezed as much blood out of the Republican rock as could possibly have been squeezed. I think he's a better politician that he's been given credit for, and it was just an impossible task.
2 comments:
I agree. I have commented on this from the reverse perspective. A major news story in the primary was why has the Clinton Machine collapsed? Why did they run such a poor campaign. We're hearing a lot of that about McCain. Why can't he keep on message? Why pick Palin.
The thing is, when you are against an inspired and inspiring opponent, with an energized base of support, in a time when your ideology has been at least called into question, it is pretty hard to run a solid campaign. McCain has been consistent in his message because people aren't buying his message. If he had been consistent, the talk now would be about his bullheadedness. And how it cause him to be 15 points behind in the polls and losing every state but Utah. I think a McCain-Lieberman ticket that talked exclusively about winning the war in Iraq would have been more boring and less successful that McCain-Palin's kitchen sink strategy.
I also mostly agree. I think McCain himself has been an excellent politician/candidate. Not perfect, but in another year, or against another opponent...
On Palin, I think she was the right type of gamble to take. It was an inspired choice, with a big initial payoff, that in the end didn't work out. If she had turned out to be just a bit better-spoken off the cuff with regard to difficult questions, such that she could have been an effective press surrogate, the choice would look an awful lot better now.
I think the campaign has been poorly run. Sure, they were running into a stiff headwind, so you do need to grade on a curve. I attribute the blame almost entirely to Steve Schmidt (sp?) and less to Rick Davis. Schmidt undercut McCain's brand of integrity with the negativity, and undercut the "experience" argument with Palin. The vision thing never was defined, and they were just not as well organized and managed as W04 or O08 have been.
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