The Pre-Election Post-Mortems

By BJ

I have to admit, much like Tim F. and Cernig, watching the circular firing squad forming in the Republican ranks is rather amusing.The Politico story on this phenomena looks at several of the decisions that have led to McCain’s implosion, but its this explanation that catches my attention.

One current senior campaign official gave voice to this “Law of the Jungle” ethic, defending the campaign against second-guessers who say it was a mistake to throw away his "experience" message in an attempt to match Obama’s “change” mantra.

"Everybody agreed with the strategy,” said this official.  “We were unlikely to be successful without being aggressive and taking risks.”

Running as a steady hand and basing a campaign on Obama’s sparse résumé was a political loser, it was decided.

“The pollsters and the entire senior leadership of campaign believe that experience vs. change was not a winning message and formulation, the same way it was no winning formula with Hillary Clinton.”

Let’s call this what it is, bull! This election was always going to be a tough slog for McCain, but during the summer, with the assistance of the war in Georgia, suddenly the steady hand with the foreign policy reputation that McCain has built up was looking pretty good to people and he had all but ate away at Obama’s poll leads. Even Obama’s selection of Biden as VP candidate was being spun as an acknowledgement of his weakness in this area, and all sorts of comments that McCain wouldn’t need any “on the job training”.

So what really happened to cause such a massive swing in their strategy? Two words: Sarah Palin. The whiplash-inducing turnaround of the Republican party faithful on the issue of experience when the non-vetted Palin was announced as McCain’s VP choice was stunning to watch. In one fell swoop, McCain undercut what was becoming a reasonably effective campaign storyline and a plausible strategic path for victory for a short-term tactical bounce. When the economic crisis hit, McCain was no longer the steady hand at the helm, and his dice-rolling instincts got the better of him and fed into the risky, erratic theme that the Obama camp was peddling, and that the VP pick was the paramount example of.

Look at many of the conservative newspaper endorsements, or the endorsements of former big-name Republicans like Colin Powell’s for Obama, and they nearly all list this irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin among their reasons for not backing McCain.

It isn’t that McCain didn’t face other problems or make other mistakes, but they were generally of the survivable type. Whatever else the coming post-mortems of McCain’s campaign bring up, it was the pick of Palin that turned the race from a close-run thing into a probable rout.