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If the dynamics don't change and John McCain loses this election, you're going to hear a lot about the failures of his campaign. You'll hear about their inability to settle on a message, to raise money, to vet Palin and "Joe the Plumber," to keep staff infighting off the cover of The New York Times Magazine. But I think Patrick Ruffini is right to argue that the campaign's real problem was its inability to overcome its candidate:
Like McKinnon I too feel the McCain camp could probably have done some things differently, but it probably wouldn't be enough to save them. What is striking about 2008 is how little the campaigns have mattered in comparison to the fundamental nature of the two men running.Nothing the McCain campaign did could change the reality of McCain the candidate's poor management instincts and his tendency to fidget around and not stay on message. When the economic crisis hit, this reality flew in the face of the McCain campaign's message of steadiness versus inexperience. Whether by design or the candidate's nature, Obama's caution and deliberation was a living, breathing talking point against the experience card.In his article on the McCain campaign's many messages, Robert Draper relays something George W. Bush told Steve Schmidt: There's an "accidental genius" to the American electoral process, where the grueling nature of the long campaign inevitably reveals the character of the candidates caught within it.* Over the course of this campaign, McCain has shown, at some key moments, a glimpse into his character during a crisis. And he has shown himself erratic and untrustworthy. At the end of the day, he chose Sarah Palin, having spent no more than an hour in her company, and having no conception of her understanding of American politics. At the end of the day, he chose to leave the trail in order to posture over the bailout bill, and then he failed to secure the deal he promised. These weren't the campaign's mistakes, they were John McCain's mistakes. Better ads wouldn't have helped. Soon enough, folks like Mike Murphy will tumble out of the woodwork to explain that Steve Schmidt just wouldn't let "John McCain be John McCain" and that McCain was a great man weighed down by a very bad campaign strategy. It will be, for some, a convenient fiction, but a fiction nonetheless.* A cynic might say, well, what about Bush? I'd argue his character was revealed, and the American people decided, at the time, that they preferred predictable idiocy to unpredictable superiority.
