McCain the Underdog

Liz Sidoti of the AP has a remarkably scathing article out today about the McCain campaign's shortcomings and failures thus far. I get the feeling, both from this article and many others in the past, that McCain is most comfortably kind of flying along by the seat of his pants. His campaign believes it won the Republican nomination by sheer force of candidate will. There's no doubt that McCain's comeback win in the New Hampshire primary, merely months after his campaign had essentially gone broke, was almost entirely a result of the candidate's skills and his dogged campaigning. But it wasn't all that surprising. He was historically popular in the state, having won their primary in 2000.

In reality, McCain won the Republican nod by default amidst a demonstrably weak field of candidates. Romney never caught on, despite spending enormous sums of money. Huckabee was never a serious challenger. Obama's comeback was actually much more impressive (he trailed Clinton by 20-30 points in the national polls all the way up to the Iowa caucuses).

McCain apparently likes to brag to donors about his come-from-behind credentials, saying, "We are the underdog. That's what I like to be." That's not going to reassure anybody. The AP story, while certainly not the first to outline the litany of complaints from Republican spectators, is still pretty devastating to read. The McCain camp is behind in money, staff, strategy, and message. If you asked me to describe in, say, five words or less Obama's theme against McCain, I'd immediately say "McCain = Bush Third Term." That's the meme his campaign hits in every speech, on every conference call, on every talk show. It's simple and consistent.

I would have no idea how to answer the same question about the McCain campaign. "Obama is a flip flopper?" That's largely a media narrative (reporters love nothing more than finding contradictions in a candidate's record), and McCain's ability to use this line of attack is severely hampered by his own well-documented position changes. "Words vs Action?" It didn't work out for Clinton. And McCain, through his 21 years in government, has done remarkably little in terms of kitchen table issues. His trademark legislation is campaign finance reform, hardly a salient issue. And his other accomplishment was favoring the surge strategy in Iraq. Few would argue that the addition of thousands and thousands of troops has increased stability in Iraq. Regardless, it hasn't changed public opinion, and unless the people start to turn around on the Iraq war, McCain's going to have to spend a ton of time convincing the American public that we should stay in Iraq and that it was a good idea to go there in the first place.

It's a good sign for Republicans that Steve Schmidt is taking over day-to-day operations of the campaign. He's a first rate campaign strategist, and should bring a steady hand to a campaign that's been routinely scatter shot in it's messaging and strategy. McCain will spend the next week in swing states talking about the economy (which he hates to talk about, by the way). This is a step in the right direction (maybe he'll even have the cajones to tell McCain 'no' next time he wants to travel to South America during the campaign). But McCain won't win on the economy. Even if he was knowledgeable and fluent about the issues (which he's not), the public is not going to vote for more of the same (and if there's one thing where McCain echoes Bush word for word, it's the economy). Still, it's important for voters to know that he's cognizant of people's struggles, and next week's tour, if nothing else, can help him accomplish that.