Makeover: Let's make McCain more like Bush

[RunInRed 16,454]

Trailing in the polls? Who knew? Anyway, since McCain is such a terrible campaigner who can't read a teleprompter, and since McCain's biggest liability is comparison to Bush, why don't we make him more scripted, and take away the thing that his supporters purport to like about him: his spontaneity?

Oooh, that will work. Let's run his campaign just like 2000 and 2004. Let's remind people everything we dislike about President 23%, including hiring all the Bush hands we can. Let's do this while attacking Obama for not being his own core self.

Brilliant.

I can't wait for the GOP convention. Should be some great theater, and a chance for a terrific warm embrace by the most unpopular President in post WW II polling history, reminding people what a dumb decision the GOP made in holding the convention in true-blue Minnesota, while the Democrats turn Colorado bluer.

Anyone want to bet on how many personnel changes the McCain camp will have between now and then?

Link

By ELIZABETH HOLMES and LAURA MECKLER

July 5, 2008; Page A4

John McCain will spend the coming week talking about the economy, but the Republican presidential candidate isn't expected to say anything new. Rather, he will repackage proposals he has already outlined -- ones the campaign fears nobody heard.

"We don't think we've made the case eloquently," Doug Holtz-Eakin, the campaign's policy director, said.

With four months until Election Day, and four months since Sen. McCain secured his party's nomination, the Arizona senator is relaunching his campaign. Trailing Democrat Barack Obama in the polls and dogged by the dismal approval ratings for the administration of George W. Bush, the campaign rearranged its staff last week. The primary reason: to sharpen its messages.

The goal is to put out a consistent message each day that can penetrate voters' minds. The ability to control a certain story line through a 24-hour news cycle is seen as one element of a successful modern political campaign and, so far, Sen. Obama has been seen as better at sticking to his chosen theme for a day than has Sen. McCain. The Illinois senator did seem to stumble Thursday, however, with comments suggesting he was moving away from his promise to pull troops out of Iraq -- forcing him to hold a second news conference after a rare admission from the candidate that "I was not clear enough."

The McCain makeover involves a complex task: How to control a politician best known for ask-anything town-hall meetings and long, rambling conversations with reporters on his campaign bus -- and, now, on his campaign plane, dubbed the Straight Talk Express.

A top adviser says they considered cutting back on those formats but concluded they couldn't. "It's John McCain, it's his brand," strategist Charlie Black said. "The fact he is engaging with average citizens and with reporters is part of his brand."

So the campaign will try to find ways to better manage what comes out of these sessions. Aides say they will push Sen. McCain for tighter delivery and to contain diversions -- if not completely eliminate them. One senior adviser said the message will be executed "crisply" from now on.

Until recently, Sen. McCain began town halls with his standard stump speech that touched briefly on a variety of issues, from immigration to the economy.

Now, most town halls will begin with a scripted speech wound around a topic of the day. Sen. McCain is then supposed to weave that topic through his answers and come back to it at the end. He will still take questions on any topic from audience members. But the campaign said it recognizes that most questions cover familiar territory, so the candidate's answers aren't likely to make news that will upstage the message of the day.

Aides say the extended sessions with reporters will continue. The rolling campaign-bus conversations have been limited because Sen. McCain spends much less time on buses than he once did. The time available is usually given to local reporters, who better reach voters in battleground states. But the campaign's new charter airplane is outfitted with an area suitable for similar conversation in the air with traveling national reporters.

Sen. Obama rarely has such open-ended, informal meetings with the media, sticking instead to short news conferences or one-on-one interviews.

The McCain campaign will also rely more heavily on surrogates for the candidate, a technique they say they have used ineffectively in the past. To keep control on the message, aides will carefully brief surrogates on specific talking points and then deploy them to reinforce Sen. McCain's message. Mr. Black says they want "more surrogates, more appearances, more air time."

Behind the scenes, the campaign is centralizing power.

In his new role running day-to-day campaign operations, Steve Schmidt, who formerly served as a senior adviser and who had worked for the Bush-Cheney re-election effort in 2004 and ran California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's re-election campaign, is taking over responsibilities that once fell to campaign manager Rick Davis.

Mr. Davis, a former lobbyist, will retain his title. But, rather than the daily messaging, he will oversee longer-term projects such as the party's September convention and the fall debates. Mr. Schmidt will report directly to Mr. Davis, but the campaign's roughly 300 employees will report to Mr. Schmidt.

Mr. Schmidt's first order of business was to reconfigure the structure of control. Mr. Davis had created a system of regional campaign managers, delegating considerable authority to people on the ground in each of 11 regions.

The idea was to delegate decision making to those closer to the targeted voters, but the campaign concluded more centralized decision-making was needed. Mr. Schmidt is now seeking to hire a national political director and a national field director.

Mr. Schmidt will also take control of campaign travel. Much of the schedule thus far has been dictated by fund raisers to bolster the campaign's coffers. As a result, some events have been held in inopportune locations or too late in the day to generate maximum news coverage.

Take Sen. McCain's decision last month to reverse course and support offshore oil drilling. On a Monday, he scheduled a last-minute news conference to say that he would make this announcement the next day -- effectively scooping himself. A campaign adviser said they announced the news early because the senator had no other public events that day and, therefore, no other message to drive.

Tuesday, he reannounced his proposal in front of an audience of oil executives in Texas, a negative association for someone trying to paint himself as an environmentalist. That same day, President Bush came out in favor of a nearly identical policy -- a coordinated move that seemed odd for a candidate trying to distance himself from the unpopular president.

Less than a week later, Sen. McCain continued his pitch in Santa Barbara, Calif., the site of a massive oil spill in 1969. The senator was pressed on his stance at both a fund-raiser and a roundtable discussion.

"We're really kind of goosey here about oil spills," one fund-raiser attendee warned Sen. McCain. "So we ask you to look out there to the south and the southeast and remember the greatest environmental catastrophe that's hit this state."

"The campaign, you know, definitely made mistakes, it definitely made errors," one senior adviser said. But that person insists there is plenty of time to catch up to Sen. Obama. "While he is ahead, I can see very clearly the back of his head."

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121...aign2008_topbox

[AURaptor 1,125]

McCain is in a statistical dead heat w/ Obama, not trailing. And what does it matter in July ? Not much.

So much for the MSM's tag of " the Maverick " for McCAIN, huh? Looks as if the press corps is fully sold out they want Obama to win, so they'll now try to convince the public of the similarities to Bush, instead of praising him for standing against him.

[RunInRed 16,454]

You realize this article was from the WSJ, right?

[Tigermike 3,045]

You realize this article was from the WSJ, right?

Once I realized your first link was from kos, I didn't bother with the rest.

[RunInRed 16,454]

You realize this article was from the WSJ, right?

Once I realized your first link was from kos, I didn't bother with the rest.

Yeah..sometimes you got read a little more than headlines...like the source article from the conservative bastion WSJ

[AURaptor 1,125]

You realize this article was from the WSJ, right?

Once I realized your first link was from kos, I didn't bother with the rest.

Yeah..sometimes you got read a little more than headlines...like the source article from the conservative bastion WSJ

The WSJ , as a paper ,isn't wholly considered conservative. What's considered conservative is the editorial board.

Thought everyone knew that.

[RunInRed 16,454]

The WSJ , as a paper ,isn't wholly considered conservative. What's considered conservative is the editorial board.

Thought everyone knew that.

I guess Fox News isn't "wholly considered conservative" either but...