"The Cake is Baked"

For the superstitious of you, avert your eyes, for I'm about to do some Californi' style speculatin'.
With Obama's numbers leaving orbit, the journalism I've been hungry for is beginning to leak out of the campaign press army. In the next few weeks we'll get to see the moving parts of the McCain campaign and understand how decisions were made, which should tickle anyone with a social-science bone. We may never get the same insights into the Obama campaign until after his Presidency, just as such reflections are only now turning up about the Bush campaigns.

I've never been convinced by the "four more years of Bush" argument, although McCain's economic policies are boiler plate Neo-Reganism. But according to the NYTimes Magazine, the legacy of the Bush re-election campaign had a critical influence a turning point for the one-time Bush opponent. Steve Schmidt (man of many consonants) ran Bush's re-election rapid response team; he is used to making tough snap decisions in the face of unplanned news. It was a lesson he learned from W himself that has echoed in McCain's campaign:

"The strategists at the meeting — including Schmidt, who was directing the Bush campaign’s rapid-response unit — fretted over their candidate’s sagging approval ratings and the grim headlines about the war in Iraq. Only Bush appeared thoroughly unworried. He explained to them why, polls notwithstanding, voters would ultimately prefer him over his opponent, John Kerry.There’s an accidental genius to the way Americans pick a president, Schmidt remembers Bush saying that day. By the end of it all, a candidate’s true character is revealed to the American people."

By this logic Schmidt pushed for McCain to "suspend his campaign" to seize the financial rescue package negotiations, thereby revealing himself to have "the right stuff". More surprising is the other influential figure in this decision: Bill Clinton. Before leaving for Washington, McCain now famously attended a Clinton Global Initiative ceremony. NYT Mag reports that Schmidt reminded McCain of Clinton's advice to him that day: “If you do the right thing, it might be painful for a few days. But in the long run it will work out in your favor.”

The neurotic family that is the McCain camp included "best friend" Rick Davis, speechwriter Mark Salter, and old flame Chris Murphy, none of whom was ever particularly in control or fond of his brothers. While some believed it to be a necessary pick, the adopted sister in Sarah Palin only added to the dissonance in McCain's tone. As they recognize less and less family resemblance, we see social-conservative Palin partisans forming a separate camp of McCain dissenters.

The laundry list of conservatives, and an extended naval metaphor, is summarized by Charles Krauthammer, who makes the case of McCain's Presidency that the campaign itself couldn't seem to articulate. Politico details unattributed views within the campaign on how the comprehensive message was lost, some of which suggest a general lack of management discipline on the part of McCain himself. This raises questions about the actual executive skill and will McCain can muster, in a project full of leaks and power struggles. Consider the question: who "ran" the McCain campaign?

Finally, the earliest signs of the Maverick's own feelings are in the Washington Times (ironically founded by the Unification Church, no seriously). Thursday, McCain indicated that the state of the race was the result of the eight-year, three-branch Republican administration: "We just let things get completely out of hand." In what should become a seminal interview, McCain decries Bush Admin. spending, signing statements, executive privilege from investigation, and Wall Street favoritism; this is the kind of unequivocal break with Bush that he only feigned before the third debate.

How do you know you've run out of message options? Well, here it is, Obama wants to tax special needs kids.