Excellent article.

news flash politics is a fical mistress...duh...you know exactly what "base" they were going after why didn't you say so...you did the right thing, don't pat yourself on the back for what your supposed do...good read

Thanks Mark, Good epitaph.

Why doesn't anyone ever suggest it might be that one man simply doesn't match up to the other in the voters' mind? We all saw the debates. It's the candidate, stupid!

You sidestep the irresponsibility of the Palin pick. This kind of 30,000 foot viewlaundry list look at the campaign doesn't work in the context of the Palin pick, which encapsulated and entombed the McCain campaign: cynical, desperate, conflicted.

This piece got it right. Everybody wants to believe it's all about guru consultants and strategies when its really a function of external events and the personalities that show up at the right time, as Tolstoy concluded. Most so-called political geniuses rack up way more losses than wins. A genius is the jockey that hopped on the right horse.

You had me until this line: "But I also don't think they had many options, and they tried them all." As trenchant a critique as any I've seen, and it undermines much of the rest. It's true that it's easy to critique a failed result, but it's also too easy to shrug aside sound criticism with mutterings about armchair quarterbacking.

Barack could not have won this campaign if Bush hadn't set him up. Everything from his relative lack of experience, his race, and his name, counted against him. Factor that in, too - that both sides were proceeding from serious disadvantages - and then you'll be able to wipe your eyes clear and see how flawed the campaign has been on the Republican side, whether it's Schmidt's fault or not. It's not just two great political talents out front: it's organization, planning, assiduous strategy and all the rest. It would be silly to fail to recognize that one side has had it and one side has not. We knew this even when McCain had his edge in the polls, we knew this when we could recognize the Palin bubble for what it was. It hasn't been all hindsight; the failures were recognized as they were happening.

Sorry, but I'm not buying it. Sure, McCain was never going to have an easy time winning, but they could have kept it close had his campaign not been so inept. Bottom line is that Palin pick (which was symptomatic of their entire campaign) ceded their best arguments against Obama and directly contradicted the "Country First" theme. Because of the Palin pick, "suspending" the campaign, and all the other idiotic gimmicks the McCain campaign tried to pull, all the Obama team had to do was sit back and watch the wheels come off the bus.

Thanks for saying what needed to be said. I may be an Obama supporter, but I've been dismayed (not entertained) by the finger-pointing and bitter criticisms aimed toward McCain/ Palin and the campaign staffs by supposed McCain supporters. Many with a platform to broadcast their opinions would be wise to observe the advice to save the armchair quarterbacking for after the game. McCain's luck has been pretty pitiful this go 'round. He doesn't need to be undermined by those within his ranks, as well.

Also, thanks for explaining why you left after the primaries. I was wondering why I wasn't hearing about you in the papers, oblivious to whether you'd left the campaign.

OK article, McCain has long benefited from a media that glorifies his indecisive and vindictive nature as a evidence of a "maverick" quality.
However, in this campaign McCain has behaved like Captain Queeg rather than the stoic mythology folks like yourself and Salter built for him. There is such a thing as winning or losing with one's honor intact and regardless of the outcome McCain will have lost his.

I respect your decision not to tear Obama down, but after this election is over, please admit that the McCain campaign was terrible. Maybe he didn't have a chance to win in the current climate, but he also didn't have to go skeevy as they did. McCain, as it turned out, was a turd of a candidate, and there's very little you can do to dress up a turd.

I disagree with the article. It goes too far the other way to let McCain's campaign off the hook. The choice of Palin, and their erratic response to the economic crisis, did them in. Palin was the result of a lack of courage. McCain was afraid to stand up to the Christian wingnuts. The second problem was sheer mismanagement of the candidate, or maybe by the candidate.

I will be very interested to know who made that boneheaded decision to "suspend" the campaign. It was a cheesy stunt, and it absolutely killed McCain. I'd also love to know who decided not to let the lovely Sarah meet the press. She was a rotten pick, but sequestering her was truly stupid.

What you are saying is that you condone the gutter politics of John McCain who abandoned the issues to race bait, lie and distort.

McCain views himself as an honorable man. Honorable men do not repudiate principles as expedient. In 2000, McCain called leaders of the religious right agents of intolerance. Palin is from the religious right McCain remonstrated against.

In July of 1999, McCain said: "Did you see the reaction when I said I promise you I won't spin because spinning is lying?" he asked after the event at the veterans post. "Everybody applauds. They know what spinning is. It's a failure to take responsibility for our mistakes."

McCain is fond of saying he is a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. Roosevelt said, "We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public.Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity."

Too many are too willing to be apologists for candidates who simply lie to win. Whatever honor McCain had before Bush-Rove showed him gutter politics work has be forever besmirched. He is a man who refuses to acknowledge he is not the person he wants to be.

The refusal of the author to condemn McCain's debasement is so telling. The politics of hate may gain victory, but at what cost?

I have a slightly different take on why this election was ever even (and still sorta is) close and it has a lot less to do with the tactics and philosophies of Steve Schmidt.

I'm going to illustrate my point through my parents.

My parents are in their sixties, middle-class, educated, relatively open-minded, and both have recently defected from the Republican Party to the en vogue Independent status. And they both are voting for McCain. Why? Because they say that, even though they like Obama, they just don't know enough about him; that he seemed to cross paths with a lot of nefarious characters in his early political career.

Oh, yeah. Did I mention that they both strongly dislike McCain and everything about his campaign? Strange, huh?

My parents, and millions of other baby boomers just like my parents (who don't think their racist and in their hearts aren't), don't know it but this rationale is their subconscious excuse for not wanting to vote for a man who's half black.

Please forgive me for bringing this back to race but if Obama were white, this would never have been one. If John Kennedy were standing before the nation right now as the Democratic candidate, saying the exact same things and running the exact same campaign that Obama is, this would be the blowout that would reflect the previously mentioned 91% disapproval rating of the country's direction.

I think deep in my parents' psyche it really isn't as simple as black and white, though. It's not that they think blacks are inferior or unworthy in any way. For them, electing a president that isn't a wealthy, affluent white man is just too outside of the way things are in their minds. Although I know in many ways they want to, voting for Obama means acknowledging America has turned a huge corner and that our lives, our country, and our government will never look the same again.

I, as most Americans (I hope), welcome this change with open arms but to many it is a scary, scary thing. Not scary because Obama is a different color but scary simply because it's change.

At this point McCain will seem lucky if he can keep his senate seat.

I don't blame these guys for not winning, but I can't say I'm quite as proud of them for doing better than they should have. It's the very things that you say you won't defend that enabled them to make the race as competitive as it is.
Here are a few things that shouldn't be defended: Obama's a Socialist, Obama's palling around with terrorists, ACORN is stealing the election. The ol' pilot might win this election (it will take a terrorist attack or Bin Laden threat like the one that did in Kerry), but, no matter who wins, these guys will have considerably elevated the animosity between the left and the right in America at an extremely critical time. Someone should have explained to them the Country First concept.

"Country First" took flight when the 72 year "old fighter pilot" selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. Senator McCain's asserting she had foreign policy credentials based on Alaska's proximity to Russia or her energy policy expertise because of Alaska oil and gas defied credulity.
How has John McCain been tested as a commander-in-chief? His example was sitting in a plane on the deck of the Enterprise prepared to attack Cuba. He often refers to his ordeal as aPOW. Neither was a position affording him more executive experience to sit in the oval office than Barack Obama, whose campaign has been novel and seemless.
At a time of crisis we do not need an impetuous, bellicose 20th century man leading us against anyone, but a 21st century leader uniting us and regaining our respect in the world community. At 76 I am ready to turn the helm to the next generation of intellectually and temperrmentally able leaders.
Mr. Schmidt and his associates may have done the best that could have been done with an eratic candidate whose time has passed. History will be the final judge.

This is one of the biggest red herrings that the right will continue to try and drag around. Lets face it: Kermit The Frog (R) against Miss Piggy (D) would split 40% to 40%. It doesn't MATTER what they say, do, hire, poll, attack... It is in those few points that the qualities of the candidate and the campaign manifest themselves. It is complete BS to say that McCain "should have been polling at 9%." If he had been a better candidate and had a better campaign he would be in the running right now - and if had been running against, for example, Sen. Clinton or one of the other Democratic candidates, he would probably be losing. His misfortune was to come up against the best campaign organization of recent memory and against an excellent candidate. He lost. Sen. Obama won. Each could have been in the other position.

Someday I plan to ask you in person in what way you differ with Obama's politics, being cut from the cloth of Ann Richards and all. Because otherwise this sounds mostly like a reasonable defense of your colleagues and a way to soothe some obviously very thin skin.

The premise that the economy itself turned it around for Obama is a specious one. I hear this on occasion as if the economy suddenly went from sunny to black on that bleak day in September. You forget that a sitting president (yeah, I know you're one of 10 people who think he's a capable person beyond buttoning his shirt) has had an approval rate at historic lows for months, that the 'wrong track' poll has existed for months.

So if your friends are so smart, how did they lose this? (And yeah, I'm pretty much going to put this in the past tense here Mark because given the lack of strategy and cohesion at Camp McCain, the barrel roll is going exactly where two planes McCain flew went).

The economy was a vehicle that put on front stage the lack of message and the lack of policy ideas resting with this candidate and campaign. I won't belabor the "Fundamentals" gaffe(s), but what America saw was an erratic man whose earlier quip about not "understanding the economy" was suddenly becoming not just rhetoric but a distinct possibility that it was the truth.

What did your guys do? Suspend the campaign. Gimmick number two.

Let's go backwards and talk about gimmick number one: Sarah Palin. Again, your guys, being so smart... what exactly was the thought here beyond a hot popular governor who hadn't even been vetted? All the rumors flying around this one will finally end at the truth once someone separates it from rumor, but most insiders point to the sheer fact that this was an unknown pushed by Bill Kristol and a right wing blogger from Colorado Springs. No vetting.

Again, fail. John McCain went from someone I could handle (albeit begrudgingly) as POTUS until the morning he picked an amateur with no national issue experience (I chose Bush in 2000 and 2004). But this was a cynical hail mary that ended up like most thoughtful folks on both sides are calling it: Disaster that showed a campaign in disarray.

Were this to be the Senator's decision and his alone would be just as equal a fail for Mr. Davis and Mr. Schmidt.

I'm not revealing anything new here. I'm just a bit baffled that a guy I know to be pretty damned intelligent and honest to be putting his lot on a premise that had it not been the economy, that Seabiscuit would have been Secretariat. This horse was an ass from day one, and I think Mark it was you who picked the wrong one.

It just belies the fact that day after day, probably while you were proofing your article even (say right around the $150K wardrobe gaffe), this campaign has had no message, has had no brand, and has had no vision.

And while I'll argue a tax-and-spend policy debate (instead of the negativity and nastiness) would have made many Americans, including me, more comfortable with McCain-Romney or anyone else, the problem with McCain remains with McCain: Either the lost maverick or the maverick that never was (I'm putting my money on the latter), and the campaign: No ability to convince the American people why they should choose McCain, only small time thuggery to scare people away from Obama.

The bottom line: Epic, epic failure for a campaign that doesn't even deserve to be in the business let alone the same zip code as David Axelrod.

(And if I'm lucky, I'll get to tell you in person on a mountain bike ride someday if you'll let me)

Congrats to "TheByzantine," it's an injustice that YOU aren't the one with a national platform to discuss these issues! The shameful state of American politics will either be seen as an anomaly that worked for a few decades, or as the downfall of the American empire - and this November is when that decision gets made. God help us all...

This is a lot of "I would have done things differently, but I don't blame them because it's not there fault." I understand you have to worry about your political future, but please take a stand! I'm tired of all this fence sitting. We need some accountability!

Some Terrorists are More Terrorists than Others

I disagree. This has been a horribly run campaign. McCain and his advisers chose to embrace Rovian tactics, and a divisive campaign that has appealed only to the Republican base. This is not 2004 anymore.

John McCain would have probably still fallen short if he adopted the following campaign, up against Obama's superior fundraising and grassroots organization, but it would've been a heckuva lot closer.

1. MAVERICK. Not just in name, but in policy. Put the differences right out in the forefront. Decry runaway spending, tax cuts for the rich, the execution of the Iraq War, the mismanagement of the economy, ignoring climate change, etc. He should've started this early in the primaries. Not flanking right politically to win the nomination, but staying righteous and giving some "straight talk" to the Republican voters that he was the only GOPer who could win in the current political climate...and the reason was because he couldn't be tied to the failures of this administration. Instead, McCain bragged on camera that he supported Bush 90% of the time, more than many of his Republican colleagues, and adopted the party line on the extension of the Bush tax cuts. He should've pointed out the Democratic majorities in Congress and said that the extension simply isn't going to happen.

2. OBAMA = BUSH. Sure they're polar opposites, but they can be construed as flip sides of the same coin. Both pledge to be uniters. Both pledge to restore our faith in Washington. Both share limited resumes. Run as a serious person with a real history of reaching across the isle and a real record of reform. Point out that having a president and congress controlled by the same party didn't work out so well last time. The tagline of this line of attack is that we were given this sales speech before and the end product was a lemon.

3. DON'T BE SUCH A REPUBLICAN. Hire both Republican and Democratic campaign advisors. Make nice with Bill and Hillary Clinton during the primary. When Obama beats her, take that as your opportunity to pick off some of Clinton's advisers and supporters. Name your cabinet early and have it be 50% Democrat and overwhelmingly centrist. Not a Bush person to be found.

4. LEAVE THE BASE ALONE. Did you think they wouldn't come to the conclusion that Obama was a muslim socialist out to sell out the country whose flag is represented in their jumpsuit? Did you not consider that they'd hold their nose and vote for you no matter what? Look at partisans Rush Limbaugh, Bill O' and Sean Hannity...they seem to have gotten over their aversion to you. Spending any amount of time after the primaries trying to reassure the base was a waste.

5. A SERIOUS VP. I'm talking Michael Bloomberg or Colin Powell. Either would've gained the support of moderates and both would've projected an image of seriousness and gravitas from the ticket. And if you picked Powell, you'd better have named Bloomberg head of your new Economy Czar position as soon as the market crashed.

6. DON'T SUGARCOAT OR DEFEND THE BUSH ERA. Key points: We're worse off than we were 8 years ago and we can't afford to take a chance on another unknown. The fundamentals of the economy are not strong, they're weak...and we're all going to have to come together in this time of crisis, set aside ideology and do what's best for the country.

OTHER: Run against the "Do Nothing" Democratic Congress. Don't lie in speeches or ads. Don't make scare ads...the 527s and the RNC will do that. Be open to the press. Quit dropping references to your POW experience everywhere or you'll devalue it. Have Sarah Palin stump for you across the country...as a supporter rather than a VP. You could've had all the benefits of her small town ways without inviting a thorough examination of her preparedness to serve as President.

Rest assured that this campaign would've raised a lot less money, but I think it would've been a more serious campaign that would've at least split the independent vote, won among males, whites and the elderly, and make a real run at winning in these formerly red states that are now trending Dem.

McCain was the only Republican candidate who could've won and he blew it by becoming just like all the others.

Thanks for the fair article about the realities of this race. But McCain's robo-calls on Obama's "terrorist" ties and whatnot -- did you really see those coming from John McCain? As a liberal who always had a soft spot for McCain, I certainly didn't.

If you guys at the Beast are gonna make a run at this, I can recommend a couple of copy editors.

Sorry, but McCain is not Seabiscuit. He is an old, worn out nag that should put out to pasture in Arizona, and he is paired with an untrained filly that ate loco weed. Palin is an example of the warped and intellectually challenged contenders that the Republican party has fielded in the past decade or so. I offer Dino Rossi as another mental and moral lightweight. I applaud your blog, it is excellent, but my unsolicited advice is get better horses.