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As I've said before about McCain, he is a terrible candidate with a great staff. So I watched the departures this morning with shock rather than glee. The fact that Mark Salter, McCain's 18 year chief-of-staff is departing shows just how badly things have gone off the rails in McCain-land.
Ultimately, I don't see how things would have turned out differently had Nelson and Weaver not been at the helm these last six months. The premise of McCain as frontrunner was always seriously flawed, and to the extent Weaver architected that strategy in 2005-06, he bears some of the blame. But ultimately, that is an expectations problem. If everyone believes you're the frontrunner, then you had better darned well perform like the frontrunner. With the base's deep-seated animosity towards McCain (something that only emerged in 2000) and his lackluster track record in fundraising (people forget this is guy who never raised a dime out of cycle), the McCain frontrunner meme was always bound to take a fall. I may be surprised by how fast it's happened, but I'm not surprised at the outcome.
So we are left with a rerun of McCain's maverick strategy from 2000 -- run by the same guy, Rick Davis, who was at the helm the first time. And that's the best case scenario for them, with only a slim chance of success had it been the plan all along, and probably no chance of success now.
The last time we nominated someone because it was "his turn" and who engendered no love amongst the base was Bob Dole in 1996. That was the McCain 2008 campaign plan. But times change. Had we had a blogosphere in 1996, with the base's dissatisfaction amplified many times over on the Internet, I doubt an uninspiring candidate like Dole could have been nominated. And at least Dole didn't go out of his way to piss off conservatives.
Until today, John McCain had four highly capable aides who could have easily vied to be his Karl Rove. That was the problem. No one was really in charge. As a 24 year veteran of Congress, this shows how poor McCain's management instincts really were, and demonstrates why Senators rarely get elected President. Marc Ambinder essentially confirms this in the tick-tock:
The sources said that Nelson's position as campaign manager wasprecariously positioned from the start because McCain did not endorse acampaign structure that would have given Nelson absolute authority overmessaging, finance and strategy. Republicans directly familiar with thenegotiations to bring Nelson aboard said that McCain promised Nelsonthat no one but him would have the ultimate say in making and executingcampaign decisions. But McCain did not follow through on thosepromises, these Republicans said.
Even a perfect campaign couldn't have nominated John McCain, but his reluctance to give one person ultimate responsibility for strategy certainly didn't help.
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