What we are witnessing is an unprecedented and tragic unraveling of a presidential nominee. From the stunning Palin FAIL to the latest, desperate cry for attention, McCain is actively losing the bet he placed on voter stupidity. The resulting fallout is his campaign's epic implosion. On McCain's most recent manic performance, a National Journal writer painfully evokes the fatally flawed Dole campaign:
The entire thing felt, somewhat ironically, like Bob Dole's decision in 1996 to resign his Senate seat and focus on a struggling presidential campaign, which he said "would take me to the White House or home to Russell, Kansas." (Or, you know, to his condo at the Watergate.) While Dole was sending the opposite message (that he'd rather focus on campaign politics than his Senate duties), both moves conveyed the notion that they couldn't handle too many big tasks at once. And both moves felt gimmicky.
Compared to the new McCain, though, Dole appears downright JFK like. And Paris Hilton sounds like a voice of reason. The NJ Author explains how McCain set the loose-cannon bar:
For Dole, however, it was a one-time ploy, one that didn't pay off. For McCain, it's part of a comprehensive campaign strategy, one that can be traced back to April 15 (tax day!), when he first proposed a gas-tax holiday. In late July, he launched the now-famous "Celeb" TV ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. On the first night of the Democratic convention in Denver, sulking Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters were invited to attend a McCain-sponsored "Happy Hour for Hillary." The same week, shortly after the Russian invasion of Georgia, the campaign inexplicably sent Cindy McCain to Tbilisi to meet with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and assess the situation.
But the campaign's strategy has intensified recently, from the "lipstick on a pig" debacle... to McCain's call to fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox... to a conference call attacking the New York Times for its reports on campaign manager Rick Davis' ties to Freddie Mac (but, notably, not Newsweek or Roll Call, which published similar reporting)... to Sarah Palin's series of on-camera, off-the-record meetings with world leaders at the United Nations.
Politics is, of course, a game of perception, one in which gambits like these can play a prominent and sometimes legitimate role. Candidates stage them because they work and, in desperate times, they can work miracles. But McCain's "red cell" strategy is a particularly peculiar one; his entire campaign is based on the argument that strong character, stability and experience should trump the hocus-pocus hooey of hope that Obama is trying to sell. The stunts undermine his ability to advance his own argument.
Paul Krugman, joining the fray, identifies McCain as a spoiler who probably should have stayed at Lady Rothschild's Manhattan residence rather than gum up progress in DC:
Senator John McCain, is apparently playing spoiler. Earlier this week, while refusing to say whether he supported the Paulson plan, he claimed not to have had a chance to read it; the plan is all of three pages long. Then he inserted himself into the delicate negotiations over the Congressional plan, insisting on a White House meeting at which he reportedly said little — but during which consensus collapsed.
I doubt McCain sought this kind of reality-based assessment of his antics. He probably imagined this latest gambit would spawn tales of heroism. And he probably wasn't counting on a curious press to call bullshit (or an informed electorate to care). As the polls and morning papers indicate, he's going to be disappointed, and Steve Schmidt is going to blow a fuse:
Senator John McCain had intended to ride back into Washington on Thursday as a leader who had put aside presidential politics to help broker a solution to the financial crisis. Instead he found himself in the midst of a remarkable partisan showdown, lacking a clear public message for how to bring it to an end.
According to the same article, McCain's supposed bipartisan leadership was as conspicuous as the location of Bin Laden's cave:
At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting.
And though McCain's leadership was absent, McCain himself was there--the guy on the left with the unsettling twitch in his eye. The guy sitting on his thumbs:
He said he was hopeful that a deal could be struck quickly and that he could then show up for his scheduled debate on Friday night against his Democratic rival in the presidential race, Senator Barack Obama. But there was no evidence that he was playing a major role in the frantic efforts on Capitol Hill to put a deal back together again.
Barack Obama believes that injecting presidential politics into delicate negotiations is counterproductive. Members of the press agree:
Still, as a matter of political appearances, the day’s events succeeded most of all in raising questions about precisely why Mr. McCain had called for postponing the first debate and returned to Washington to focus on the bailout plan, and what his own views were about what should be done. Those political appearances are a key consideration for Mr. McCain less than six weeks from Election Day and at a time when some polls suggest he is losing ground against Mr. Obama, especially on handling the economy.
But how do Obama's actions contrast with McCain's amazing instability? One word--presidential:
For a moment, at least, it was Mr. Obama presenting himself as the old hand at consensus building, and as the real face of bipartisan politics.
"What I’ve found, and I think it was confirmed today, is that when you inject presidential politics into delicate negotiations, it’s not necessarily as helpful as it needs to be," Mr. Obama told reporters Thursday evening. "Just because there is a lot of glare of the spotlight, there’s the potential for posturing or suspicions."
"When you’re not worrying about who’s getting credit, or who’s getting blamed, then things tend to move forward a little more constructively," he said.
The main problem for McCain is that his reckless, egocentric and erratic reaction to this crisis is juxtaposed with Obama's calm, sensible and collaborative response. The resulting image is a contrast between someone we could see as president and a train wreck so unsightly that it would make Britney Spears blush.
(cross-posted on MYDD)