Fire the Campaign

New York Times ^ | 10/13/08 | William Kristol

[MartinaMisc]

It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign.

He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed.

He may be anyway. Bush is unpopular. The media is hostile. The financial meltdown has made things tougher. Maybe the situation is hopeless — and if it is, then nothing McCain or his campaign does matters.

But I’m not convinced by such claims of inevitability. McCain isn’t Bush. The media isn’t all-powerful. And the economic crisis still presents an opportunity to show leadership.

The 2008 campaign is now about something very big — both our future prosperity and our national security. Yet the McCain campaign has become smaller.

What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.

And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past — running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.

[relictele]

I’m hesitant to post since I said the EXACT SAME THING some weeks ago but the ear-pluggers didn’t want to hear it.

[junta]

A bit of truth with Kristol here. The attack ads rile up the rightist base and that is about it. If McCain did not have an incumbet GOP president and the perception of a bad economy hanging near him these attacks might push that undecided his way. But ask the average rube with little political knowledge and they vote reflexively with little logic, and the negatives stack more against McCain.

[nathanbedford]

For William Kristol of all people to go public with a radical overhaul of the campaign at the 11th hour which smacks of desperation, could not be more surprising than if the pleader were Lindsey Graham. Has chaos so overtaken the McCain campaign headquarters that Kristol cannot get through? Why does he need to go public? Is this a trial balloon? That is unlikely.

At any rate, Kristol's analysis of the situation is correct but his remedy could not be more wrong. The analysis says that half measures avail McCain nothing. McCain must decide either to go quietly into the night like Bob Dole or to blast off with no holds barred and risk the blowback and the cries of racism and McCarthyism from the media. McCain must decide that he is not running for majority leader of the Senate but for president of the United States. Kristol concludes that McCain would rather lose than expose Obama. Kristol's remedy? Become Mr. Nice Guy. This is utterly fatuous.

I posted this some days ago:

John McCain simply does not understand the nature of a candidate's compact with his constituents.

First principle: the conservative movement, indeed the Republican Party, owes John McCain no loyalty whatsoever. Yet McCain solicits our loyalty and our support, our money and our votes. What does he owe us in return?

The facile response to be expected from most candidates is that the candidate owes his constituents only that he be honest, industrious and to exercise his best judgment if his supporters' votes put in office. But the problem with John McCain is that we conservatives have no trust in his political judgment. Most of us have no doubt that he would be honest but we are very concerned that he will not adhere to the conservative values he embraces now to get our votes. We admire greatly his physical courage and understand his moral courage. I for one accept as true his account of his epiphany in his cell after brutal torture which brought him to understand: " I was no longer my own man, I was my country's". So we conservatives accept his patriotism and his honesty, but we remain concerned about his conservative moorings. Frankly, we're afraid that John McCain, like George Bush, once elected will slip his moorings and sail away from conservative principles on his own compass.

We conservatives are not supporting John McCain out of his fealty to his conservatism or to his Republicanism nor even to him personally as much as we admire his character. We are doing so out of fear, fear that his opponent, will pervert the Constitution and subvert the Republic. We question Obama's loyalty to America, we suspect his proclivity to act in concert with thugs, both domestic and foreign, who gain political ends through violence. We are afraid of his racism. We are justifiably frightened that when he makes summits with despots without preconditions he really means he will sell us out. We believe he will sell out its country because we know that he attempted to sell out our soldiers in Iraq on his visit there by underlining the ongoing bilateral negotiations for the return of our soldiers home. We fear for our children if a financial tsunami breaks over us. Fear that they will have their birthright stolen from them and never be able to become what they might have been in a free, capitalist, system because the American dream will have been stolen from us by a demagogue who would manipulate the masses vulnerable in the misery of the worldwide depression. In short, most of us who support John McCain do so because the stakes in this election have literally never been greater for America, at least not since 1864.

The undeniable evidence in this campaign shows that facts have simply ceased to matter because the media either will not report them or report them in a backhanded way that redounds against any Obama opponent. We Freepers have tried to break through the media wall and alert the still persuadable middle third of the electorate that the cumulative evidence of Obama's radicalism means that our fears are at least plausible and prudent and not, as the mainstream media would have it, paranoid, delusional, or even racist. We have tried to convince the world that there is very little upside to Obama and the downside is so terrible that to accept the very real risk to our country and our children is madness. Alas, we failed to break through the media's Iron Curtain.

Growing more desperate as we read the polls, we exhorted John McCain to go on the attack, believing that it was only the candidate himself who could get around the media and alert the dwindling number of persuadables to the real and present danger presented by the growing likelihood of an Obama victory. Some of us understood the dilemma that you as a candidate were in. We recognized what your pollsters no doubt have been telling you, that the image of George Bush and the whole Republican brand has become poison and must be shed from your campaign. It is important to understand, though, that this situation was the direct and proximate result of an inexplicable and inexcusable failure of the Bush administration to defend either itself or Republican/conservative principles.

When political scientists write the history of this 2008 campaign, they are likely to conclude that it was irretrievably lost not by John McCain but by George Bush. We are also aware, John McCain, that your pollsters tell you that uncommitted independents often react negatively to negative campaigning and we concede, if only for purposes of discussion, that to some degree this is true. These two factors, the aversion to Bush which created the need to distance the campaign from him, combined with an understandable desire not to offend decent Americans with negative campaigning, have led you to commit profound campaign blunders in responding to the financial crisis. They caused the McCain campaign to flounder pathetically. They validated the Democrats' mantra that the financial crisis is the inevitable results of wrongheaded Republican laissez-faire capitalism and despicable (Republican) greed on Wall Street. Once this template was explicitly validated by the McCain campaign, the pivotal issue of this election was lost. Like the apathy of the Bush administration in the face of its own destruction by attacks which featured, "Bush lied and people died", the McCain campaign has placed itself on the wrong side of the most important issue to confront America since at least 9/11. Worse, pandering after the votes of those who mindlessly blame everything on George Bush will not gain the foregiveness of these voters but it will leave future generations wallowing in socialism. It will also leave the Republican party groping about in the wilderness trying for a generation to shed the burden of guilt for causing the second great depression.

Many of us now assume that when you belatedly at last turned to the attack along the lines we have been exhorting you to do, that your pollsters had told you what we instinctively understand: the election is lost unless Obama can be destroyed morally. Let us hasten to stipulate that to morally destroy Barak Obama is itself a very moral act because it does not require 1 ounce of lying. You have to understand, John McCain, that it is the duty of the adversary in a two party system to honestly alert the electorate to the true state of facts which would disqualify a candidate. That is how the system works. If a candidate shrinks from this duty, it is the equivalent of condoning the election of a demagogue under our system.

Happily, our natural inclinations as conservatives to expose Obama are utterly in harmony with our two party system. John McCain, you will never be ashamed of yourself for telling the truth about Obama but, if you shirk that duty out of fastidiousness or from bad political advice, your legacy will not be limited to your own election loss. If you think that Obama represents at least a potential threat, then say so. Do not tease conservatives and show a little leg one minute and then wag your finger at us the next minute for our salacious thoughts. Are you our man or not?

Senator McCain, your history in the Senate simply does not warrant our support. We support you only because the alternative to you is not just undesirable but unacceptable. This is the nature of your commitment to conservatives: In return for our support you must fight our fight. If you are not willing to morally expose and destroy Barak Obama because you do not really believe that Obama constitutes a threat as a stealth radical, then we are entitled to say that there is not a significant difference between a committed liberal named Barak Obama and an eratic conservative named John McCain. We are entitled to go our own way and try to somehow resurrect Reagan conservatism from the ashes of your defeat.

John McCain, the choice is yours.

[hosepipe]

Occams razor demands that if McLaim WANTED to win he would be winning..
Therefore McLAim does not WANT to win..

O'bamas policys are so weak a high school debater could win the debate.. maybe a grade school debater.. WHat is NOT well doccumented LIES are well documented pie in the sky solutions that wouldn't work..

McLaim is throwing the fight or laying down...
There may be no more fight left in the man..

[hosepipe]

Occams razor demands that if McLaim WANTED to win he would be winning..
Therefore McLAim does not WANT to win..

O'bamas policys are so weak a high school debater could win the debate.. maybe a grade school debater.. WHat is NOT well doccumented LIES are well documented pie in the sky solutions that wouldn't work..

McLaim is throwing the fight or laying down...
There may be no more fight left in the man..

[shalom aleichem]

test

[pabianice]

Watching the McCain campaign is like averting your eyes from someone haplessly crapping their pants in synagogue. Its horrible and embarrassing and painful. McCain’s unwillingness to shred Obama’s anti-Americanism is baffling from a man who has served his country so admirably and bravely. A total Dem/Lib government will do damage to the country that will take decades to reverse.

[pabianice]

Watching the McCain campaign is like averting your eyes from someone haplessly crapping their pants in synagogue. Its horrible and embarrassing and painful. McCain’s unwillingness to shred Obama’s anti-Americanism is baffling from a man who has served his country so admirably and bravely. A total Dem/Lib government will do damage to the country that will take decades to reverse.

[WackySam]

He should have started acting like a Conservative right after the primary.
It’s much easier to pull the squishy moderates to the right than Conservatives to the left.

He’s toast.

[Aquinasfan]

The only problem with the McCain campaign is McCain. He needs to allow his campaign to go negative on Obama. Negative campaigning works. And there is a wealth of negative information about Obama for the McCain campaign to work with. It's an embarrassment of riches.

[JEH_Boston]

They’re concerned; they’re very concerned. Good news for our side.

[Grampa Dave]

What is wrong with FR this morning?

I’m not able to go below reply #6 on this thread.

My internet connection and new computer is working on every other site.

[rwfromkansas]

McCain needs to present a series of bold economic plans to counter Obama’s coming out today, and it looks like he may be getting ready to do that per a CNN article.

He better. While attacking Obama’s character is important, voters won’t really care about it if he can’t present an alternative plan.

[JohnnyP]

No, he’s right. He said they should have had Sarah on Fox News Sunday, instead of the campaign manager.

[Hildy]

With friends like this....a second grader would be able to run a better campaign if 99% of the media were constantly propping him up and tearing his competitor down.

[blasater1960]

McCain just needs to bring in someone else on the sly....Dont fire them...it would just make him look even more desperate...

[oldbill]

Too late Kristol.

This race was over when McCain ended up the last man standing in the primary season. With no solid conservativerunning and several lukewarm conservatives splitting the vote among themselves, McCain squueked out a “victory”.

Never before has a major party nominated a man who had contempt for the beliefs of the bulk of his party. Never before has a candidate reserved his greatest criticism and contempt for his supporters while refusing to step up to the practices, policies and beliefs of his opponents.

This race and its sad conclusion was summed up in the video last week where McCain told his supporters that “You don’t have to be afraid of Obama as President.” Just look at the faces of different people in the background as the words came out of McCain’s mouth - smiles turned to groans and smirks.

The Republican establishment of RINO elites is back in charge of the party and their mindset is that of the era of Democrat dominance before 1994 - just be happy with what little morsels liberalism throws to us, as long as we have our status and country club lifestyle protected.

Even a McCain presidency, now a faded dream, would not have fixed this drift toward me-too liberalism. The Obama years will be a disaster, and that will be good, because it will take that to wake up the American people.

Citizenship for illegals, continued voter fraud, retreat and surrender on the political and military battlefields around the world, more terrorist attacks on Americans at home and abroad, re-enactment of the Fairness Doctrine shutting up Rush - that’s what it will take.

[ethical]

I wrote McCain Palin campaign earlier asking why Palin would do SNL after they made a “joke” suggesting her husband was molesting her daughters. I hope she does not do the show but if she is forced to by her handlers I suggest she goes off script at the right moment and says something like, “I'm so glad to have this opportunity to tell you to your face that what you said about my family crossed the line. It wasn't funny, it was crude and cruel.” And then turn to the people, the camera, “If you want someone who will fight for you, who won't punish you for working hard, who'll defend children in the womb and children born alive, who won't surrender the War on Terror, vote McCain Palin. Thank you.”

[Uri’el-2012]

William Kristol is a twit.

Who pays his salary ?