Worst Campaign Ever
Its become painfully obvious to many within the GOP, and gleefully obvious to many non-PTSD afflicted Democrats, that McCain doesn't have a frakkin clue how to run a national campaign. A guy who's greatest asset was a press image that was a masterful work of pure media manipulation and brilliant, relentless self-promotion, listened to a guy who told him he could only win by dumping on the media. A guy who rebranded himself "Mr. Integrity" in the wake of the Keating Five scandal who proceeds to run the vilest, most foully negative, presidential campaign in recent memory.
Well, today, comes news that McCain's hammered the last few nails into the coffin of his ambition as the Washinton Post reports that McCain has beggered the once-formidable GOP ground game squirrel away funds for a last minute TV ad blitz.
This move is, to me, emblematic of why McCain would have been a terrible president. He's a archtypical Navy flyboy, utterly disdainful of the importance of infantry, a guy who believes every war can be won from 30,000 feet without ever actually having to understand the terrain or get down in the blood and the mud. A permanent tyro, a guy who's so convinced of his own strategic brilliance that he can rarely give sufficient acknowledgment to an error to learn from it and, when he does, is incabable of drawing the correct lesson. A guy who trusts his gut, without recognizing that, when the choice is between something he already knows and something he doesn't know enough about to judge its merit, his gut will always tell him to go with what he knows.
I have seen a corner of Obama's ground game, first hand. Even what little I have seen of it, combined with what I've read, tells me that it it would have won even against the 2004 Rovian ground game. Against the unfunded, uncoordinated, disjointed, demoralized and, in many cases, resentful, ground game the Republicans are going to be able to cobble together on Tuesday from the junked pieces of Roves 2004 machine, they don't stand a chance.
Bottom line: McCain has just thrown away the one tool in his GOP-issue toolkit that could have delivered the close red leaning states into his column in favor of a funding one last spurt of his incredibly lame and ineffective ads. In so doing, he's ensured that the the Republic will be spared the kind of inept leadership he's exercised over his own campaign.
I agree with your point.
Add to that the broader context of the Republican nosedive piloted by Rove, Bush and Cheney(which Carville wrote about in an article "Blame the party, not the campaign").
So in a macro-perspective, McCain's foundationless campaign simply made a bad product fail faster.
October 31, 2008 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
My experience with their ground game. They have repeatedly called me - in person, by name - assuming they could get me to volunteer and help them. I have made no secret of my support for Obama. But somehow they don't even record the info! If these folks are spinning their wheels this badly, they are totally ..... (well, you supply your favorite expletive).
October 31, 2008 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm talking about GOTV as in "vote," not GOTV as in "volunteer." But, I'm confused. what info are they not recording? That you're already volunteering or that you can't?
October 31, 2008 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that TheraP means that McCain's people are calling asking her to volunteer for their GOTV effort. In other words, they call, ask her to go knock on doors for John McCain, she tells them she is supporting Obama and the next day the whole cycle repeats itself because they neglect to record that "this is an Obama supporter, not one of our supporters, so we really do not want to enlist her to go knock on doors."
October 31, 2008 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah. Yes. Of course that's what she meant. I was just momentarily confused by the entire notion that there are people who are actually willing to make phone calls for McCain. Although I suppose its possible there's just the one and he or she keeps calling TheraP over and over and over again.
October 31, 2008 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
As goes TheraP, so goes the nation!
October 31, 2008 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Remember that McCain, being the maverick he is, can't be getting along with those 177 lobbyists he hired to run his campaign. They all know he wants to throw them out of Washington, so maybe they're setting him up to fail?
October 31, 2008 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of all the people I wouldn't want to be, I guess one of the major ones, is Cindy McCain on November 5th.
Why is she with him? Why is he with her? They obviously don't like each other.
October 31, 2008 7:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
McCain has run a impressively poor campaign. Palin was his biggest mistake but he made many others. I honestly don't understand why he did what he did. He won the nomination because of his independence from Bush and then decided to embrace and promote many of W's most horrible ideas. Running a Rovian campaign when most Americans think Rovianism got us into this mess in the first place.
I haven't seen Obama's ground game at work, but from all I've read and heard it is impressive. McCain's appears to be marginal.
It would have been tough for any Republican this year, but I think a better candidate would have made this contest much closer at this stage. I think now McCain can win only through voter fraud.
October 31, 2008 11:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seriously, is there any world in which the McCain campaign's decision makes sense? Advertising is supposed to be part of a campaign's overarching narrative -- it tells the candidate's story (and his opponent's) and frames the issues. It moves voters over time through repetition. It defines conventional wisdom. It does not get butts into voting booths, which is what McCain needs right now.
I dunno; maybe I'm missing something here?
Don't know if you've seen it yet, but there was a really good post about McCain's "ground game" by Sean at FiveThirtyEight earlier today.
November 1, 2008 12:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
And yet, McCain still polls at 45% or so. Makes one wonder how much inbreeding has occurred in this country over the years.
November 1, 2008 12:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
After reading that he bussed in 4000 kids to a rally last week, I think he just doesn't have the people to run a real ground game.
I think that was the rally Joe the Plumber didn't show up for.
Seriously ads are the easy way out of explaining his lack of support. We've seen and heard how the campaign is fraying at the edges in many places.
November 1, 2008 1:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
A 2004 Rove game would likely have blown Obama away. McCain didn't even dip into Rev. Wright, cocaine, Rezko and a number of other issues. Rove would have invented a sex scandal or something else for the mix, perhaps revealed Obama's "intent" as constitutional scholar to require pederasty, farm communes, 5-year-plans and an Islamic State.
Richard Dreyfuss met Jack Nicholson in an elevator after he won an Academy for best actor. Nicholson stayed silent the whole way down until the doors opened, and then laconically let out Nicholson- style, "I bet you're fucking glad I didn't make a film this year."
And Dreyfuss certainly was.
November 1, 2008 7:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
You do realize its not 2004 any longer, don't you?
November 1, 2008 10:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
His biggest mistake was Palin, but his first mistake was taking a nap during the months that he was the presumptive republican candidate, and Clinton and Obama were fighting it out.
If he had developed an actual set of goals, using the "vision thing" that would have appealed to independents and swing voters he would not have had to make the huge gaffe of Sarah Palin. She energized the base (which would never vote dem anyway), but she scares the shit out of all moderate and intelligent republicans.
He just coasted when he should have been gearing up. But in his defense, he really doesn't have a vision, so he would have just been faking it anyway. I'm convinced that he just wants to be Prez so he can up his progeny -- he doesn't have a "plan" for any of the things he says he has a plan for, including getting OBL.
He is an empty shell, and he doesn't even have his honor left when it's all over.
November 1, 2008 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Something that did occur to me during that summer was that "The West Wing" had been prescient in the way the long Democratic primary made it difficult for a more quickly chosen Republican to campaign. They're entirely negative at this point and, without someone to capaign against, they're just sad old guys with creepy smiles in front of a green screen.
November 1, 2008 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Right, with nothing to go negative about, he could have done something really mavericky -- he could have campaigned about his own positives, and then relied on that bedrock when it was time to go against the dem nominee.
Problem is, his positives are a millimeter deep. He doesn't articulate solutions for anything: "I know how to fix the economy. I'm going to lower everyone's taxes. I want everyone to be rich. I know how to catch Osama BinLadin. I have a plan for this; for that; for everything. I know how to fight." He truly is nothing more than a caricature, and I don't feel one bit sorry for him.
November 1, 2008 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
One thing about the Obama ground game... it isn't 'controlled' or 'inherited' from the traditional Democratic organization. It is very independent and full of people passionate about a politics of hope and not 'fears and smears'. There is no way a traditional ground game can compete with the enthusiasm of Obama's supporters.
November 1, 2008 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink