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Former McCain consultant Mike Murphy doesn't think the problem is that McCain is saying stupid things to the editorial board of the Des Moines Register. He thinks the problem is that he's in Des Moines at all:
What the Hell was McCain even doing there in the first place?1.) Obama is going to win Iowa.2.) Editorial board meetings are usually pure trouble to begin with and result only in newspaper endorsements that persuade very few voters beyond the immediate family members of the editorial board.3.) Within the rarified category of newspaper editorial boards, the Des Moines Register is one of the most liberal in the country. I'm rather surprised that halfway through the McCain interview they failed to switch over to Esperanto, the peace-loving language of all nations.So, 35 days left and McCain is in Iowa? Why put McCain in the wrong state, at the wrong place? No surprise the result is the wrong message and the wrong tone.On some level, of course, Mike Murphy thinks the real problem is that he's not running John McCain's campaign, and instead there's this guy Steve Schmidt turning an American hero into a craven lizard-politician. And fair enough. But there's no reason that McCain's presence in Iowa should have produced the "wrong message and the wrong tone." The dude's not a plant. He doesn't need sunlight and swing states to thrive. McCain's message was bad because he doesn't know much about health care and hasn't thought through the issue deeply enough to construct a sharper answer. His tone was bad because he's a cranky guy who can't always control his temper. Murphy is trying to explain away McCain's behavior on bad handling, and you can bet that it will soon be joined by many more attempts to explain away McCain's contemptible campaign as the product of bad advisers and a crazy base. But at the end of the day, the buck stops with the candidate. If McCain had spent more of his career understanding policy and less constructing media-friendly soundbites, he wouldn't look like a lost kitten when the discussion demanded substance. And if he were more insistent on campaigning with honor and less interested in winning daily news cycles, he'd be running a more respectable campaign. But the common denominator and ultimate authority here is John McCain. This campaign is his responsibility.
