There is always the sense of chaos around a losing campaign. The very real sense of the matter is that if you're down, you're doing something wrong. So while we can look on as John McCain has changed his positions on several things recently and go "look at him, he's erratic", it is likely nothing more than the same struggle that every candidate goes through when they are down in October.
However, it is not the changing behavior of John McCain that has caught my eye, but the very real sense that his campaign is itself not sure of where to go. We have had three announcements over the past 72 hour regarding the possibility of a new McCain economic plan. First it was on, then it was off, now it's on...but who knows anymore. Apparently, they will only release one "if it's needed" as though being in the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression doesn't qualify as "needing" a new economic plan.
More and more, however, the McCain campaign is beginning to look like the last days of the Clinton race. Perhaps the most noticeable sign is the very real sense of "how can this be happening?" among his supporters.
This is not meant as an insult to either candidate, but it is shocking to see how much they are alike when faced with Barack Obama's campaign. Senator Obama is not the king of a sound-bite knockout blow. But he does have a penchant for finding your center of gravity-- the things that you need to stay on your feet in a campaign, and take them from you.
With Hillary, it was several factors. One was the sense of entitlement that Hillary had. Whether it was actual ego or not, the fact was the the Clinton machine seemed too sure of itself, too ready to claim victory before the race had really began. Obama took this and made it into a matter of ego. He once again took McCain's strength-- his experience, and made it into a liability. This strategy mirrors the Karl Rove method of attacking your own weaknesses, but what Obama had learned was to do it cleanly-- or as cleanly as possible.
We all remember the final days of the Clinton campaign-- the sense that it was over and that she should just concede, not because she was a worse candidate, but because it was only dragging out the inevitable. Can anyone say the same does not feel somewhat true of McCain. His actions reek of desperation, and his claims to having Obama "right where we want them" seems eerily reminiscent of Clintons claims of potential victory even though it was mathematically impossible for her to win.
In the months afterwards, we heard of the fractures within her campaign-- the many different viewpoints that had emerged and how Hillary herself seemed unsure of which was the correct action. How she had tried to balance having a positive campaign with all of a sudden facing defeat and needing to start attacking-- to the point where she was insinuating the Barack Obama was a lier because while he claimed he had not thought before of being President, the Clintons found a report saying he DID want to be President...from Obama's kindergarten class.
Bill Clinton also found himself a bit of a pariah after becoming so enraged with the state of affairs (and, apparently, being left out of Obama's list of influential presidents), that he compared Obama to Jesse Jackson and began a line of inquiry about the racial overtones in his campaign that he did not want to raise. Instantly, Hillary had to scale down the attacks due to the backlash.
The McCain campaign is facing a similar situation. While they were much more prepared to go negative, the fact was that they have not been able to find things damning enough about Obama to bury him the way they had intended. Instead, they are connecting dots, and finding their own absurd scandals to try to press-- including the fact that at one point, Bill Ayers wife went to work for a law firm that, (gasp), hired Michelle Obama several years later. These are bottom-of-the-barrel accusations and they have the same feel as the Clinton campaigns' accusations about Senator Obama's kindergarten homework.
McCain has also had to deal with the relative speed in which racial overtones have grown amongst his supporters. While he himself has made few comments, his running mate has made several comments that have been interpreted as seeming to contain racial overtones. Meanwhile, his campaign was quickly vilified in the media for the several examples of hateful, racist comments. While not as directly damning as the Bill Clinton controversy, the effect is similar-- it blunts your ability to make attacks, as people become hyper-sensitive once you or your campaign is believed to be promoting racist thoughts.
Perhaps the most telling sign that John McCain becoming Hillary is the increased reliance upon aides and spokespeople to push the rhetoric-- which is itself becoming rapidly more chaotic and less coherent. McCain surrogates have spoken three times about economic plans in as many days and each had a different message-- not only different in the content, but differing in the actual existence of a plan. Such miscommunication or deliberate internal struggling was commonplace at the end of the Clinton campaign.
Perhaps there is something to the thoughts that we always perceive the losing candidate as flailing about, but I personally believe that the erratic news out of the McCain campaign is not due only to his personal searching for a winning strategy, but a breakdown of internal cohesion similar to that which ended the Clinton campaign. Once again, it appears, the campaign which has remained the most stable, even though it appeared to be weaker, was able to perform far beyond expectations.
I have not doubt that McCain, like Clinton, expected victory. I have no doubt that both were forced into running negative campaigns as a result. I have no doubt that both are left, like their supporters, with a sense of "how did this happen?". And I have no doubt that when it is all over, Obama will be there as calm and poised as he was on the first day of his campaign, smiling as the reports start pouring out of the McCain campaign about the internal debates and the frenzied back-and-forth that signaled the final days of the campaign.