Palin's Fox Debut

Sarah Palin apparently didn't make a very big splash during her debut:

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Palin is doing "news analysis." I still can't stand the way she puts words together. It's as if there is a little person inside of her mind scrambling around, holding up signs for her to read. O'Reilly tries to get her to say let's bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. Why didn't O'Reilly ask her the difference between North and South Korea? Why didn't he ask her policy questions? She does indeed admit that she asked questions about Iraq's connections to 9-11 (none). She is right about one thing, most Americans don't care about the kind of crap in Game Change.

60 Minutes: Palin Chosen out of Desperation

The republicans chose Sarah Palin at the last minute, because Joe Lieberman wasn't going over well with the base. I don't think that's particularly revealing. What is revealing is that Palin is dimmer than we knew. Palin thought Saddam Hussein caused 9-11 and she didn't know the difference between North Korea and South Korea. She didn't understand who her son was fighting in Iraq.

The fact is McCain was doomed to lose. The nation is changing. The republicans were offering nothing and still have nothing to offer.

One thing this 60 Minutes will do is cause Palin to write ferociously on her Facebook. It will also sell a lot a lot a lot of books:

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Steve Schmidt's thoughts on the infamous Couric interview:

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Sarah Palin a "terrifying" vice presidential prospect because she is "mentally limited:"

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"Can I call you Joe?" was a way for Palin to stop calling Joe Biden Sen. O'Biden:

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McCain's campaign was in disarray from the beginning:

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Palin's Big Spread in Vanity Fair

Zina Saunders illustration
Palin gets a big spread about stuff we already know--she's charismatic representing a small sliver of Americans. She's highly inept and doesn't have the worldliness needed to be a modern day vice president, let alone president. She doesn't worry about what she doesn't know, which is where audacity comes in:

By all accounts, Palin was either unwilling, or simply unable, to prepare. In the run-up to the Couric interview, Palin had become preoccupied with a far more parochial concern: answering a humdrum written questionnaire from her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman. McCain aides saw it as easy stuff, the usual boilerplate, the work of 20 minutes or so, but Palin worried intently. At the same time, she grew concerned that her approval ratings back home in Alaska were sagging as she embraced the role of McCain’s bad cop. To keep her happy, the chief McCain strategist, Steve Schmidt, agreed to conduct a onetime poll of 300 Alaska voters. It would prove to Palin, Schmidt thought, that everything was all right.
Then came the near-total meltdown of the financial system and McCain’s much-derided decision to briefly “suspend” his campaign. Under the circumstances, and with severely limited resources, Schmidt and the McCain-campaign chairman, Rick Davis, scrapped the Alaska poll and urgently set out to survey voters’ views of the economy (and of McCain’s response to it) in competitive states. Palin was furious. She was convinced that Schmidt had lied to her, a belief she conveyed to anyone who would listen. Read the big Palin story here.

Palin wanted to speak to her people:

Election Night brought what McCain aides saw as the final indignity. Palin decided she would make her own speech at the ticket’s farewell to the faithful, at the Arizona Biltmore, in Phoenix. When aides went to load McCain’s concession speech into the teleprompter, they found a concession speech for Palin—written by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully, who had also been the principal drafter of her convention speech—already on the system. Schmidt and Salter told Palin that there was no tradition of Election Night speeches by running mates, and that she wouldn’t be giving one. Palin was insistent. “Are those John’s wishes?” she asked. They were, she was told. But Palin took the issue to McCain himself, raising it on the walk from his suite to the outdoor rally. Again the answer was no.

GOP Going the Way of the Dinosaur Says Republican

Former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt, next to Obama's David Plouffe.

More from Plouffe, whose first question is: what happened in New Hampshire? Plouffe, by the way, is working on a book.

How Palin Was Chosen for McCain

By now, you've heard about the NYT's story on McCain's failed campaign. The story is not all that it's cracked up to be, or maybe I'm tired of reading of McCain's antics. But here's some of how Palin was chosen:

Then for a half-hour or so, the group reviewed names that had been bandied about in the past: Gov. Tim Pawlenty (of Minnesota) and Gov. Charlie Crist (of Florida); the former governors Tom Ridge (Pennsylvania) and Mitt Romney (Massachusetts); Senator Joe Lieberman (Connecticut); and Mayor Michael Bloomberg (New York). From a branding standpoint, they wondered, what message would each of these candidates send about John McCain? McInturff’s polling data suggested that none of these candidates brought significantly more to the ticket than any other.

“What about Sarah Palin?” Schmidt asked.

After a moment of silence, Fred Davis, McCain’s creative director (and not related to Rick), said, “I did the ads for her gubernatorial campaign.” But Davis had never once spoken with Palin, the governor of Alaska. Since the Republican Governors Association had paid for his work, Davis was prohibited by campaign laws from having any contact with the candidate. All Davis knew was that the R.G.A. folks had viewed Palin as a talent to keep an eye on. “She’d certainly be a maverick pick,” he concluded.

Seems to me Palin's sex appeal had all the men wrapped. That's my theory of why they would choose someone with so little vetting. She was too ignorant to realize she was being used as a tool. But now she seems to be using McCain to further her agenda:

For two hours, Salter and Schmidt asked Palin questions based on the vetting material. Salter says they discussed her daughter’s pregnancy and the pending state investigation regarding her role in the controversy surrounding the state trooper who had been married to her sister. The two advisers warned her that nothing was likely to stay secret during the campaign. Salter says that he was impressed. “The sense you immediately get is how tough-minded and self-assured she is,” he recalled three weeks after meeting her. “She makes that impression in like 30 seconds.”

NYT Story Set to Reveal McCain Camp Tactics

It seems the McCain campaign has been like a ship being run by its crew and not it's captain.

HP: The New York Times Magazine is set to publish an explosive story this Sunday on the inner workings and combative personalities of what has been a wild few months for the McCain campaign.

The piece, written by Robert Draper and titled "The Making (and Remaking and Remaking) of the Candidate," breaks some new reportorial ground, including a growing weariness within a campaign that seems more interested in tactical victories and the next compelling narratives than an overarching strategy. Draper writes:

"By October, the succession of backfiring narratives would compel some to reappraise not only McCain's chances but also the decisions made by [Chief Strategist Steve] Schmidt, who only a short time ago was hailed as the savior who brought discipline and unrepentant toughness to a listing campaign."

Having interviewed several of the Senator's chief aides, Draper details the process by which McCain ultimately chose his running mate (New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was surprisingly high on the list). And the decision may have been even more impulsive than initially thought. Gov. Sarah Palin, who had never been on the VP shortlist, was advanced at the last minute by Schmidt and Rick Davis, and was picked after a less-than-hour-long chat in with McCain at his ranch in Arizona.

From there, Draper tracks the campaign through Palin's widely praised convention speech, the roaring early campaign events, and then the first glimmer of doubts. There are additional, juicy nuggets that he uncovers earlier and along the way. These include the birth of the Obama-as-celebrity attack line -- the campaign felt it was on the wrong track, its pollster described their situation as "third and nine," and Schmidt "blurted out the epiphany concerning Obama. 'Face it, gentlemen,' he said. 'He's being treated like a celebrity.'"
...

Then there is Schmidt's -- perhaps fatal -- push for McCain to "go all in," leave the campaign trail and head to Washington to work on the financial bailout package.

"Schmidt evidently saw the financial crisis as a 'true character' moment that would advance his candidate's narrative."

McCain's Long Odds

RCP: Pennsylvania yesterday. Wisconsin today. Iowa tomorrow. What in the heck are Steve Schmidt & Co. doing? Do they know something the rest of us don't? Or are they simply flailing about, searching for a toe-hold in a Kerry state that they might be possibly be able to flip to offset losses and still make 270?

I'm not sure. But the map in this race has boiled down to some pretty straightforward analysis. Start with the Bush map in 2004 and work from there: Iowa is almost certainly gone, and Obama has a decent edge in New Mexico as well.

That leaves eight red states from 2004 for John McCain to defend: Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. If he wins them all, he's president. If he loses Nevada but wins the rest, we have a 269-269 tie (depending on the outcome in the 2nd Congressional districts in Nebraska and Maine). If he loses anything else, he's the senior Senator from Arizona.

McCain to Get Nastier

Take a look at Think Progress, where they track McCain's numerous lies.
McCain's aide Steve Schmidt says here on out McCain is going to say that Obama is going to make everything all bad. I'm sure that the covert Obama smear machine will kick into overdrive as well.

WaPo:
Schmidt said the campaign will press two arguments as forcefully as possible in the coming days. One is that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief and that, in a time of two wars, "his policies will make the world more dangerous and America less secure." Second, he said, McCain will argue that, in a time of economic crisis, Obama will raise taxes and spending and "will make our economy worse."

Obama signaled yesterday that his focus will be on painting McCain as out of touch on the economy. Appearing at a rally in Greensboro, N.C., Obama ripped into his rival's remarks about the economy during the debate -- but more for what McCain didn't say.

"The truth is, through 90 minutes of debating, John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he had nothing to say about you. He didn't even say the words 'middle class.' Didn't say the words 'working people,' " Obama told a cheering crowd of about 20,000 people on a rainy morning. He later appeared in Fredericksburg, Va., and spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner in Washington. [Story, A14.]

The middle-class omission also is the subject of an Obama television ad that the campaign rolled out yesterday, asserting: "McCain doesn't get it. Barack Obama does."

McCain Adviser: Off With Their Heads!

McCain leadership style: Blame and finger pointing. McCain is just getting a little bit of his own medicine.

On a conference call with reporters just now, McCain campaign senior advisor Steve Schmidt absolutely lit in to the New York Times. Schmidt made his remarks after Rick Davis answered a question from CNN's Dana Bash about today's story in the Times regarding his former work for the Homeownership Alliance, an advocacy group of 19 member organizations which include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Schmidt said: Read what he said.

The story McCain is hot under the collar about:

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.

But last week the McCain campaign stepped up a running battle of guilt by association when it began broadcasting commercials trying to link Mr. Obama directly to the government bailout of the mortgage giants this month by charging that he takes advice from Fannie Mae’s former chief executive, Franklin Raines, an assertion both Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign dispute.

Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.

“The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae, who said that while he worked there from 2000 to 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together paid Mr. Davis’s firm $35,000 a month. Mr. Davis “didn’t really do anything,” Mr. McCarson, a Democrat, said.

McCain's Truth Troubles

NYT: For better or worse, the candidacy of Barack Obama, a senator-come-lately, must be evaluated on his judgment, ideas and potential to lead. McCain, by contrast, has been chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, where he claims to have overseen “every part of our economy.” He didn’t, thank heavens, but he does have a long and relevant economic record that begins with the Keating Five scandal of 1989 and extends to this campaign, where his fiscal policies bear the fingerprints of Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. It’s not the résumé that a presidential candidate wants to advertise as America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. That’s why the main thrust of the McCain campaign has been to cover up his history of economic malpractice.

McCain has largely pulled it off so far, under the guidance of Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé. A Rovian political strategy by definition means all slime, all the time. But the more crucial Rove game plan is to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness. All campaigns, Obama’s included, engage in false attacks. But McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates keep repeating the same lies over and over not just to smear their opponents and not just to mask their own record. Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard journalistic stabs at puncturing it.
....snip....
For all his fiery calls last week for a Wall Street crackdown, McCain opposed the very regulations that might have helped avert the current catastrophe. In 1999, he supported a law co-authored by Gramm (and ultimately signed by Bill Clinton) that revoked the New Deal reforms intended to prevent commercial banks, insurance companies and investment banks from mingling their businesses. Equally laughable is the McCain-Palin ticket’s born-again outrage over the greed of Wall Street C.E.O.’s. When McCain’s chief financial surrogate, Fiorina, was fired as Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive after a 50 percent drop in shareholders’ value and 20,000 pink slips, she took home a package worth $42 million.

The McCain campaign canceled Fiorina’s television appearances last week after she inadvertently admitted that Palin was unqualified to run a corporation. But that doesn’t mean Fiorina is gone. Gramm, too, was ostentatiously exiled after he blamed the economic meltdown on our “nation of whiners” and “mental recession,” but he remains in the McCain loop. read the whole thing.

Republicans: Life Happens

Yep.

Maureen Dowd: Now reality, in all its messy, crazy, funky glory, has flooded the party, in the comely, crackling form of Sarah Palin.

Unable to stop the onslaught of wild soap opera storylines erupting from the Palin family and the Alaska wilderness, McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt offered caterwauling reporters a new mantra: “Life happens.”

Indeed, it does. Only four days into her reign as John McCain’s “soul mate,” or “Trophy Vice,” as some bloggers are calling her, on the ticket known as “Maverick Squared,” Palin, the governor of Alaska, has already accrued two gates (Troopergate and Broken-watergate), a lawyer (for Troopergate), a future son-in-law named Levi (a high school ice hockey player, described by New York magazine as “sex on skates”), and a National Enquirer headline about the “Teen Prego Crisis” with 17-year-old daughter Bristol.

Here's some more

As more and more titillating details spill out about the Palins, Republicans riposte by simply arguing that things like Todd’s old D.U.I. arrest or Sarah’s messy family vengeance story will just let them relate better to average Americans — unlike the lofty Obamas.

“If this doesn’t resonate with every woman in America, I’ll eat my hat,” Bill Noll, an Alaska delegate whose daughter got pregnant at a young age and kept the baby, told The Times’s Ashley Parker.

Even as they push Sarah Barricuda as the glamorous but tough hunting and fishing mom who can juggle it all — she’s the only nominee, as Fred Thompson bragged in his convention speech, “who knows how to properly field dress a moose” — they rant at reporters who wonder how she will juggle it all and question some of her judgments.

I recommend the whole story. Pretty much sums up where we are.

McCain Camp Pleads For Palin Privacy

What was it that Hillary uttered: If you can't stand the heat...
The audacity. The McCain camp should've fully vetted Palin, tested her with focus groups and polling, and disclosed this information up front.

Swamp: (Of course, we in the media weren't the ones who chose the Alaska governor even after being fully aware that her 17-year old daughter was pregnant, which is what the McCain campaign says it did.

it was the McCain campaign who created the present situation, not the media. If people in the campaign, especially the candidate, were so concerned about the Palins' privacy, including the privacy of the 17-year old pregnant daughter, they probably wouldn't have nominated the Alaska governor.

Visit the Swamp's site for video. Steve Schmidt also lies about Obama's record.

Bush Congratulates Rush Limbaugh on 20 Years of Excellence

Well, that says it all. I usually avoid writing about Rush. He's so -- Bush. And his voice gave rise to Bush and the extreme wackos on the right. There really aren't words to describe Rush that haven't already been said and McCain is being shaped and molded by these folks. McCain hasn't pushed back against Bush because he can't. They've taken over his campaign.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm just calling along with President 41 and the former governor of Florida. We're fixing to have lunch here, and I said, "Listen, we ought to call our pal and let him know that we care" for you. So this is as much as anything, a nice verbal letter to a guy we really care for.

Kitchen Sink is McCain's Best Chance to Win

Get ready for more kitchen sink from the McCain camp. It's seen as McCain's best hope. McCain is employing Hillary's strategy to appeal to the "low information" voter who doesn't necessarily seek out information but gets their news from Fox and TV ads.

As I recall, Hillary lost more than a political campaign using the kitchen sink. While she gained support of certain diehards, she lost the respect of many democrats.

NY Mag: Until last week, it was an open question which of these visions of McCain bore a closer relation to reality. But with the weeklong string of attacks uncorked by the Arizona senator and his people during Obama’s trip abroad and in its aftermath—some brutal, some mocking, but all personal and focused on Obama’s character—we now have an inkling of just how deep in the mud McCain and his people are willing to wallow in order to win in November: right up to their Republican eyeballs.

.....
The racial undertones of this assault are subtle but undeniable, as Obama himself suggested when he asserted last week that his opponents are trying to make voters “scared” of him because he “doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency.” They’re most glaring in “Troops,” which features footage of Obama sinking a three-pointer in Kuwait, despite the fact that the shot took place at a military base, which undermines the ad’s argument. But the spot’s deeper aim is to foster an unconscious simile: Obama as a blinged-up, camera-hungry, NBA shooting guard, Allen Iverson with a Harvard Law degree. Am I reaching? Consider this: Would the ad have featured footage of Obama on a golf course draining a hole-in-one? “No, it wouldn’t,” laughs a GOP media savant. “The racial angle is the first thing I thought of when I saw that ad. It fits into the celebrity stuff, too.” (For McCain, that impolitic, pro-Obama Ludacris track was manna from hip-hop heaven.)

The man behind the Obama smearing is none other than a Karl Rove disciple, Steve Schmidt.

But Weaver, Murphy, and McKinnon are no longer guiding McCain. Instead, the motor behind his operation now is Steve Schmidt, the shaven-headed strategist who earned his bones running Karl Rove’s war room in 2004, Frenchifying and de-war-heroizing John Kerry. What Schmidt and his associates have apparently concluded is that McCain’s weaknesses—on the election’s most salient issues and as a candidate—are so pronounced and Obama’s vulnerabilities so glaring that the low road is their guy’s best, and maybe only, route to the White House. They’ve concluded, in other words, that even if McCain may not be able to win the election in any affirmative sense, he might still wind up behind the big desk if he and his people can strip the bark off Obama with sufficiently vicious force.

McCain Puts Bush Veteran in Charge

More staff woes for John McCain, who now puts Steve Schmidt in charge. He helped bring us Bush Cheney.

CNN:
Campaign manager Rick Davis said Tuesday that senior adviser Steve Schmidt would take over day-to-day operations of the campaign.

The Bush campaign veteran will report to Davis, but the rest of the campaign will report to Schmidt, who will be in charge of everything from messaging and communications to the political structure, organization and scheduling.

Davis will shift into what's being described as a more "natural role" for him -- the kind of duties he handled before last summer's mass firings in the McCain campaign. He will work on the vice presidential search and on planning matters such as the Republican National Convention.

Schmidt's top priority, according to a senior aide, will be to stop "unforced errors in the campaign."

.....

McCain advisers privately tell CNN that the moves are a direct result of missteps in messaging and scheduling that didn't give the candidate a good platform, and a political structure that many thought was misguided.

The Wednesday shakeup comes on the first anniversary of what McCain aides call "Black Monday" -- when much of the campaign's staff was fired because it ran out of money and began collapsing.

From Politico:

Schmidt, who ran California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's reelection campaign and was a top communications aide in President Bush’s re-election effort four years ago, is taking over day-to-day operations from campaign manager Rick Davis. Schmidt will shape the campaign’s message, run its political operation and oversee most every facet of the organization, including the candidate’s schedule, policy statements, deployment of surrogates and coalitions.

“He'll be the maestro who conducts the symphony,” said McCain adviser Charlie Black.

A McCain insider said the change gives Schmidt “near total control of the campaign."

The shift was announced Wednesday morning at a staff meeting in the campaign’s headquarters in Arlington, Va., with Davis making the announcement that he would focus on long-range issues such as the Republican convention, selection of a vice-president and debates.

NYT's take
WaPo:

Schmidt becomes the third political operative in the past year to take on the task of attempting to guide McCain to the White House. A veteran of President Bush's political operation, Schmidt will be in charge of finding a more effective message in the Arizona Republican's race against Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who leads in most polls.

In a telephone interview, Schmidt said that McCain faces a difficult challenge, given the overall mood of the country, but that he is encouraged by the race remaining relatively tight.

"There are 125 days left until the American people will decide the next president," he said. "Senator McCain is the underdog in the race. We suspect he is behind nationally five to eight points but well within striking distance. I will help run an organization that exists for the purpose of delivering John McCain's message to the American people." Schmidt is also expected to abandon Davis's plan to put roughly a dozen regional campaign managers in place around the country.