It’s Always the Candidate, Not the Campaign
The post-mortems have already started even though McCain’s campaign is not officially dead yet.
That said, this piece by Dan Gerstein reinforces what has become a truism in politics: win or lose, it’s always about the candidate and not the campaign:
One day, Obama is too inexperienced; the next, he’s too liberal; now, he’s palling about with terrorists. One day, McCain rails against earmarks and big-government spending; then he embraced the $700 billion bailout bill; now he is proposing a last-minute basket of middle-class sweeteners.
But at the end of the day, McCain has only himself to blame for this largely predictable predicament. He is the one who built his campaign on a fundamentally irreconcilable premise: The war hero thought he could win a character contest by lying, cheating and generally stealing from the political playbook of the most reviled president of the last century. And just as inexplicably, he thought he could somehow escape George Bush’s black hole-ish shadow by hiring his advisers.
Well. Yes.
Shorter Dan Gerstein: McCain got screwed by Bush twice — once in 2000 and again, finally, in 2008.
Obama said it so well at the Al Smith dinner last night.
Their field blew chunks, and McCain never, ever had any kind of “A” team — so he borrowed Bush’s since those guys weren’t doing anything anyway. But the writing was always on the wall, the GOP was going to lose this one. They just didn’t figure it would be Barack they’d lose to.
I was talking to my son about this election and his contention (devoted Hillary-ite that he is) was that it isn’t about the candidate — Obama’s on top because the Republicans sucked. I didn’t say it (it took Miss Julie to point it out later) but it IS about the candidate after all — the Republican candidates were all pathetic.
As for Obama’s observation about Giuliani and McCain, it was genuinely hilarious! And even funnier was Obama’s delivery — after the laughter died down on the punchline, Obama chuckled audibly which triggered a fresh round of laughter.