1 Boring Old Man

Conservatives Welcome McCain Shake-Up
July 3, 2008

John McCain’s decision to turn his campaign operation over to Steve Schmidt is being treated as a sign of weakness by the media today. Although some have noted that McCain made a similar move during the Republican primaries; one that signaled his campaign’s turnaround from disaster to eventual winner.

What matters more right now is how Republicans respond to the change in leadership and their initial reaction seems to be a positive one. Schmidt is known for his discipline and he was mentored by Karl Rove and worked on the Bush re-election campaign, which is definitely comforting to Republicans who see a lack of direction coming from McCain HQ. But Schmidt also helped salvage Arnold Schwarzenegger’s re-election when he too seemed in a helpless state. That should be reassuring to more moderate Republicans who worry about McCain running a race that’s too conventional.

Patrick Ruffini, who initially supported Rudy Giuliani in the primaries, is happy with the Schmidt move:

I’m not completely impartial here, but this is the guy who took Arnold from less than a sure thing to a 20-point winner in 2006, who ran the confirmation processes for Justices Roberts and Alito, and and who was the Bush operative most responsible for defining John Kerry. So this is a big deal.

But even with the largely positive reception from conservative circles, not everyone is happy. Hot Air’s Allahpundit worries that McCain’s campaign may have already made too many major errors to bounce back:

What’s the political strategy when you allow your opponent, who has just had a grueling four months, time to catch their breath, regroup, fundraise and start to define himself?

An Adviser Molds a Tighter, More Aggressive McCain Campaign
September 6, 2008

… And the catalyst for the change has largely been Mr. Schmidt, 37, a veteran of the winning 2002 Congressional and 2004 presidential campaigns, where he worked closely with Karl Rove, then Mr. Bush’s senior strategist.

Mr. Schmidt’s stamp on the campaign this year was evident from the opening day of the convention to Mr. McCain’s acceptance speech on Thursday.

His stamp was reflected in the sharp tone of the scathing prime-time speeches, all of which Mr. Schmidt reviewed and approved, and some of which were criticized as stretching the truth. It was evident in the campaign’s fierce attacks on news organizations as they examined the extent to which Mr. McCain had vetted Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska when he chose her as his running mate, and reported on the pregnancy of her teenage daughter (the disclosures were released just as Hurricane Gustav was hitting the Gulf Coast, in a gambit of news management that is one hallmark of Mr. Schmidt’s style).

And it could be seen in the ubiquitous slogan “Country First” — as in, Mr. McCain puts it there, Mr. Obama does not.

The changes in Mr. McCain’s operation were noted approvingly by Republican leaders, who once despaired at his chances against Mr. Obama. “It’s steadily improving — in terms of performance, organization, offense,” said Fergus Cullen, the party chairman in New Hampshire. “There were definitely early bumps and now things are getting accomplished.”

Mr. Rove said Mr. Schmidt’s increased authority — which came about after what amounted to a coup by Mr. Schmidt and other McCain aides with ties to the 2004 campaign, that gave him equal status with the campaign manager, Rick Davis — has been the best thing to have happened to Mr. McCain.

“Since the elevation of Schmidt and his new responsibilities, he’s given the campaign a new focus and energy and drive that’s been very impressive,” Mr. Rove said. “They’ve had a much better July and August than April and May”…

Mr. Schmidt is not quite a grand political strategist or tactician like Mr. Rove. His role for Mr. Bush in 2004 was running the war room — orchestrating often savage attacks on opponents, responding instantly to breaking news, digging up damaging information and pushing back on any criticism — and that shoot-first mentality infuses the culture of the retooled McCain campaign.

But with a drill sergeant’s hectoring and a football coach’s motivating, Mr. Schmidt, a thick tower of man with a shaved head who can go from jovial to belligerent in an instant, has largely imposed on Mr. McCain’s once loose and feuding campaign the Bush tenets for success: relentless consistency in a combative message honed to disqualify opponents, hammered home by a campaign with clean lines of command…

Mr. Schmidt is considered by members of both parties to have a superior sense of a greatly altered news media environment, caused by the proliferation of political Web sites and blogs, providing all different ways of getting out information. This new environment, he has told friends, is easily manipulated because of round-the-clock thirst for news, increased competition, lowered standards created by the proliferation of outlets and hunger for the outrageous.

It was Mr. Schmidt, a fan of both pop culture and Ultimate Fighting, who pressed for the campaign to include Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in advertisements attacking Mr. Obama, aides said. It was Mr. Schmidt, they said, who pushed to drive blogs and other media organizations to present Mr. Obama’s outdoor convention setting as a pretentious temple by circulating photographs of columns and sending out a news release calling it the “Temple of Obama,” which were gobbled up by Web sites and cable television shows…

At the risk of being terminally naive, I think this election is as much about Schmidt/Rove as it is about McCain/Obama or Palin/Biden. More than any time since F.D.R., this country needs a massive refocusing of government. George Bush and Dick Cheney have plunged us into an abyss with their disasterous foreign policy, abysmal foreign relations, near-fascist domestic policies, all packaged with an ineptness unseen in recent history. And they were elected twice using electioneering techniques that put the antics of the old Dixiecrats to shame. The South was once run on racism. Now the whole country has been run on something similar – classism, christianism, businessism, etc. So, while we desparately need to elect a rational, functional government, we also need to mark a definitive end to the era of Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt and their brand of dishonest playground politics.