{"id":16423,"date":"2008-07-31T09:56:12","date_gmt":"2008-07-31T13:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16389.html"},"modified":"2008-07-31T09:56:12","modified_gmt":"2008-07-31T13:56:12","slug":"its-not-the-campaign-its-the-candidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/its-not-the-campaign-its-the-candidate\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s not the campaign, it’s the candidate"},"content":{"rendered":"

We talked earlier<\/a> about the frustration is some Republican corners about John McCain becoming Senator Small, abandoning some of his perceived strengths to become a petty, almost pathetic, attack dog. The next question, of course, is why he ended up this way.<\/p>\n

There’s a temptation, at times, to think McCain is a good man who’s been led astray by a bad team. McCain used to abhor Karl Rove, Rove’s team, and Rove’s style of slash-and-burn, scorched-earth politics. And yet, here we are, and McCain is taking Rove’s advice, has hired Rove’s team, and is following Rove’s playbook to the letter.<\/p>\n

The WaPo has a front-page item<\/a> today suggesting it’s an awkward fit, and helps explain why McCain appears to be such a bad candidate.<\/p>\n

As Election Day nears, McCain’s campaign is adopting the aggressive, take-no-prisoners style of Karl Rove, the GOP operative who engineered victories for President Bush. The campaign continued the attack Wednesday with a sarcastic television ad deriding Obama as a “celebrity,” part of an intensifying effort to cast him as an elitist.<\/p>\n

But the sharp-edged approach is being orchestrated for an unpredictable candidate who often chafes at delivering the campaign’s message of the day. It is that freewheeling style that has made him popular with voters and cemented his reputation for candor and straight talk.<\/p>\n

McCain, who was most comfortable as an underdog in the unscripted environment of the New Hampshire primary, makes his advisers cringe as he delivers the attack line — and then keeps talking. In that respect, he is no Bush, his handlers say.<\/p>\n

The result is a presidential campaign that sometimes rolls between serious policy discussions about the nation’s future and gotcha politics aimed at undermining his opponent’s character. McCain himself is often caught in the middle, proclaiming his commitment to the former while participating in the latter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This might sound compelling at first blush, but I don’t buy it. Indeed, the underlying message of this argument is that McCain is fundamentally a smart, decent guy who’s being turned into a monster by a bunch of Rove-inspired Dr. Frankensteins.<\/p>\n

But that’s not quite what’s happening here.
\n
\nKevin explained<\/a> quite well why this it’s-not-McCain’s-fault argument misses the mark.<\/p>\n

Apparently he’s just a straight talking guy who woke up one morning and found himself mysteriously under the sway of a vile cabal of political hit men and unable to do anything about it.<\/p>\n

Enough’s enough. McCain hired Steve Schmidt, he approves the strategy, and he signs off on the ads. If his campaign is mired in sleaze, it’s not happening despite<\/i> McCain, it’s happening because<\/i> of McCain. Stop making excuses for him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite right. McCain hired Rove’s operation for a reason: he really<\/i> wants to be president, and doesn’t much care how he gets there.<\/p>\n

The Post article argues that McCain “sometimes rolls between serious policy discussions about the nation’s future and gotcha politics.” Really? Where are these elusive “serious policy discussions”? Seriously, name one. I can’t.<\/p>\n

If McCain wanted to be a substantive candidate, he’d be a substantive candidate. If he wanted to present his vision of the future, he could do that, too. If he wanted to make this entire presidential race a battle of ideas and issues, that was clearly an option available to him. McCain — not his team — decided against it.<\/p>\n

Some of the coverage suggests there’s a tension between an honorable candidate and his team of hatchet-men. I doubt it. What we have here is an angry, undisciplined, confused candidate, who’ll do anything to win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We talked earlier about the frustration is some Republican corners about John McCain becoming Senator Small, abandoning some of his perceived strengths to become a petty, almost pathetic, attack dog. The next question, of course, is why he ended up this way. There’s a temptation, at times, to think McCain is a good man who’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}