11 Days Out, And The Whispering Begins
24 Oct 2008 08:54 am
Call it a circular firing squad, or internal dissension, or simply the natural evolution of a campaign that is disappointed with how the endgame is playing out.
There's a faction within the McCain campaign has begun to whisper about Gov. Sarah Palin to reporters. The faction includes staff members and advisers who consult with staff members. It does not seem to include any members of the senior staff, although the definition of the senior staff here is a bit elastic.
This faction has come to believe that Palin, perhaps unwittingly subconsciously or otherwise, has begun to play Sen. McCain off of the base, consistently and deliberately departed from the campaign's message of the day in ways that damage McCain. ("palling around with terrorists" was a line that escaped HQ's vetting... Palin's criticism of the campaign for pulling out of Michigan was greeted by anger internally... Palin's expressed opinion that Rev. Wright is a legitimate issue -- which subtly knocks McCain for not raising it -- was perceived as an attempt to preemptively blame McCain's wobbliness for his loss, which would theoretically enhance Palin's standing with the base.) The complaints extend all the back to Palin's vice presidential vetting. Major disclosures, issue positions and associations did not come up, and the campaign was so overwhelmed with new information early on, it largely abandoned an effort to defend them individually. This is the claim, anyway. For the record, senior adviser Mark Salter, accurately identified everywhere as the aide who is closest to McCain, calls this scenario "bullshit."
It is NOT clear whether McCain shares any of these feelings at all, or how high up the chain of command they extend. (Reports of tension within that high command are overstated.)
Even those McCain aides who harbor doubts about Palin are quick to say that there are many Palin defenders among the staff, and that there is an almost universal belief that the media has treated her most unfairly. People close to McCain say he has come to view almost every attack on Palin as unfair, although it has not escaped his attention that his campaign has lost control of her public image, and that far too many news cycles have been dominated by Palin. (Salter denies this.)
A Sunday morning quarterback still makes a persuasive argument for picking Palin. In this environment, the Republican candidate could only win if he consolidates his base and wins a majority of persuadable votes; the Democrat simply has to turn out Democrats. Though McCain at one point wanted to pick Joe Lieberman, he'd have cut a leg from the stool and replaced it with one that, aside from his party affiliation -- independent Democrat -- has no real appeal among independents anymore. One step backward and no steps forward. By the time the news began to leak out that McCain wanted Lieberman, the trail balloon was also leaky. Republican delegations made it clear that they'd walk out on McCain. We still don't know why McCain decided that the risk wasn't worth taking -- that's for another Draper piece -- but we know that he suddenly shifted back to someone who had impressed him early on, someone who, at the time, could check the two boxes: excite Republicans and convert independents and persuadables.
Whether the vetting was complete or rushed, whether Palin and her advisers were completely forthcoming about her record.... again, wait for the Draper piece. The point here is that the choice was defensible. That almost every piece of information that has come out subsequent to the pick has hurt Palin can be interpreted in several ways: either the media was preordained to crush her spirit from the beginning, or the McCain campaign didn't know about them, or they've been distorted beyond any sense of the rational.
The Obama campaign believed at first that Palin helped McCain among core Republicans, especially among men. No discernible effect among independents. Now they believe that Palin has hurt McCain among independent suburban women -- a cohort of voters who, not coincidentally, has moved very solidly into Obama's column. Republican strategists outside the campaign read the same numbers.
It behooves me to note that in 2004, similar criticism -- he's not a team player -- was lobbed at John Edwards by members of John Kerry's senior staff, they assumed that Edwards was the culprit and did not account for the prerogatives of the staff he brought with them....certain attack lines, for example, that Edwards was supposed to utter never made it into his speech texts.
Barring the unforeseen, a major change in the national mood, or a comet, The McCain campaign is on a trajectory to lose the election, and it is common for factions to develop, and to begin to point fingers at other factions. The discovery of that the RNC billed $150,000 for the purchase of clothing and accessories for the Palin family brought these submerged tensions to the surface.
People close to Palin and one person who has direct knowledge of the clothing purchases say that they cannot imagine that they added up $150,000 -- there's no way, in other words, that the clothing that was bought for Palin amounted to that total. (Palin hints at the this here.)
Palin herself at first did not seem happy at the prospect of being dressed in the new clothes.
marcambinder.theatlantic.com |
