I agree with Mark McKinnon that the tendency to call political winners ‘geniuses’ and political losers ‘idiots’ is overblown and unfortunate. For example, I thought John Kerry ran a very strong campaign, won all the debates, and has little for which he should apologize. At the same time, when we look at the many things Obama’s campaign has done that Kerry’s did not do, we can see the difference between a good campaign and a great one. But where does John McCain’s campaign come down on this scale.
For starters, please try to tell me one thing that McCain has done well. Everyone knows that you run to the right or left (depending on your party) during the primaries and then you tack back to the center in the general. Obama did this. Did John McCain?
Everyone knows that you have to define your opponent early, before they can define themselves. So, why did McCain wait until October to bring up William Ayers and all this other mumbo-jumbo?
While John McCain was blathering on and on and on about his time as a POW and the superfantabulous ‘Surge’ in Iraq, Barack Obama was defining him as George Bush’s older, more cantankerous, twin.
Obama created a brand that is familiar, from his rallies, his website, his commercials, his posters, his buttons, and his bumper-stickers. John McCain campaigned in front of lime-green backdrops, settled on no defined message, and finally came up with the vaguely fascist ‘Country First’ motto. How inviting!!
Barack Obama had a clearly defined strategy for winning the Electoral College. It involved empowering a ground-up grassroots campaign and getting them out to register voters in record numbers. It involved expanding the map of competitive states into every region of the country. It involved mobilizing the youth vote. What strategy did McCain have besides copying Bush’s 2004 strategy?
In a way, I’m sorry that McCain ran such an inept campaign because it will rob Obama of some of the credit he deserves for running a great one. But there is simply nothing that I can point to and say ‘that was a smart move by McCain’. I mean, I haven’t even brought up the selection of Sarah Palin or his erratic response to the financial meltdown. Those were mistakes, but they were wholly gratuitous mistakes. He would have lost anyway. And his debate performances? They were the worst I’ve seen in my life.
So, I don’t blame the Republicans for pointing fingers. But the Republicans should remember before they go throwing stones at McCain, that they’re the ones that created a situation where only 9% of the electorate thinks the country is headed in the right direction. They all own a share in McCain’s epic failure.
