McCain's Campaign In Complete Disarray

Everything's falling apart for crazy old McCain this week: Palin has been an unmitigated catastrophe and now this whole "let's make believe we're suspending the campaign for the good of the country" schtik fell flat on it's face. Like we reported earlier, in the end he was forced to get his saggy old ass on a plane and head down to Mississippi to face the music. Craig Shirley, a Republican strategist who consulted for McCain during the primaries summed it up nicely:

"It just proves his campaign is governed by tactics and not ideology. In the end, he blinked and Obama did not. The 'steady hand in a storm' argument looks now to more favor Obama, not McCain.... My guess is that plasma units are rushing to the McCain campaign as we speak to replace the blood flowing there from the fights among the staff."

Hillary Clinton staffer Howard Wolfson was even less forgiving: "It means that people think he went back on his word. John McCain's presidential campaign has been in a death spiral since the Wall Street collapse and this summit gambit was an attempt to pull out of it. But it hasn't succeeded because McCain hasn't done anything to move the ball forward."

If there is one bright side to the suspension/cancellation debacle, it was that it got Sarah Palin off the front pages. Her dismal interview with Katie Couric has persuaded more and more independents and even Republicans not only that she is unfit for high office, but that McCain's judgment has been so impaired by uncontrollable ambition that he can't be trusted at the country's helm. His willingness to put America last has stunned many voters who were keeping an open mind to him. John Judis:

McCain boasts of his prescience on the surge, but the surge took place four years after a needless war that McCain helped start--a war that devastated a country, destabilized a region, undermined America's standing in the world (and I am not merely speaking of our moral standing), and killed and maimed thousands and thousands of people. It is the kind of an action for which your average politician or general (I am thinking of the Argentinean generals who masterminded the Falklands war) would be banished from public life. It should have been the end of McCain and Bush and all those people.

I never doubted, however, that McCain's motives in pushing America into war were honorable. Nor do I question his motives in pushing Georgia into NATO or in rattling the sabers against Iran. I question his judgment and wouldn't want him as president. But I do question his motives in inserting himself into the attempt by the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and the Congressional leadership (excluding the usual suspects from the Republican House delegation) to fashion a plan for preventing a Wall Street crash. He has shown a willingness to put the success of his campaign ahead of the country's welfare. And it's not over a relatively minor matter-- like offshore drilling or creationism in schools.

I know there are economists, some of whom I respect, that think this financial crisis will blow over, that it's a crisis in the financial superstructure that won't ultimately affect the country's industrial base. I have never understood the post-1980 stock market very well, but I know something about economic history, and I know that at a certain point, a financial crisis can get out of hand and lead to a credit crunch that will depress the industrial base and set off a vicious cycle of unemployment. I also know a little bit about international economic history--enough at least to appreciate what would happen if nations began to abandon the dollar the way they abandoned the British pound eighty years ago. As Paul Krugman--who has been writing about the mortgage mess for years--has argued, it is not worth taking the chance that this crisis will blow over.
That's a long way of saying that it is simply unpatriotic-- it's an insult to flag, country, and all the things that McCain claims to hold dear-- for McCain to hold this financial crisis hostage to his political ambitions. McCain doesn't know a thing about finance and is no position to help work out an agreement. If we do suffer a serious bank run, or a run on the dollar, it can be laid directly at his feet. As I said to friends last night, if McCain had been president at this point, I would have wanted to impeach him.  

That brings me back to David Brooks' column. David thinks that beneath the surface of McCain the craven campaigner, that the man who nominated an ill-prepared  Sarah Palin as his possible successor and has lent his energies to blocking a financial bailout, there still sits a "real McCain" who could govern fairly and effectively as president. I doubt it. I really doubt it. Whether because of age or overreaching ambition, McCain has become the kind of man he earlier railed against. He has become the Bush of 2000 against whom he campaigned or the Senate and House Republicans whom he despised. His defeat is now imperative.

Still even McCain running around like a chicken without a head making an ass of himself couldn't completely bury the gravity of the Palin situation. I'm sure you know that the National Review is one of the most lockstep Republican propaganda sheets anywhere. Today Kathleen Parker looked at Palin and concluded what normal Americans have as well: She's out of her league. Parker urges her to resign from the ticket-- for the good of the country.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”

When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?”

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

For the past week I've been hearing that the emergency tutors McCain has hired to teach Palin about international and domestic policy have said it is hopeless and that she's not capable of even faking it convincingly-- as we saw for the past two nights during the Katie Couric interview. A well-connected Republican friend in Washington told me that one of the lobbyists giving her a crash course in foreign policy said she makes George Bush look like a serious scholar and that even when she says she "gets" something, she's as likely to repeat it wrong within 5 minutes than repeat it correctly. At the same time, friend in Alaska tell me she did well in her gubernatorial debate against Tony Knowles two years ago. Folksy goes a long way. This morning Ed Schultz, who is working with different sources than I am, came to a similar conclusion about her inability to learn.

McCain Camp insiders say Palin "clueless"

Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as "disastrous." One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, "What are we going to do?" The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is "clueless."

Fortunately, for people who do put America first, there's this: