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The McCain I Know
The environment the GOP candidate ran in, which grew worse the closer he got to Election Day, made a very difficult task close to impossible.
In July last year, I boarded a flight from Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., to Manchester, N.H., in the company of Senator John McCain and his son, Marine Corps Private James McCain, who was scheduled to deploy to Iraq a couple weeks later. Raised in a military family, the senator was familiar with the experience of bidding good-bye to loved ones as they left for war. But Jimmy was the first of his seven children to do so, and although few observers would detect the worry for his son’s safety that burdened him or even recognize the tough but slightly built teenager accompanying him that weekend, he could think of little else.
I often had the feeling that reporters were motivated by a well-intentioned desire to help America prove that we had overcome racial bigotry.
That hardly made him unique. Many thousands of American parents with sons and daughters serving in combat zones have experienced the same anxiety the McCains felt. But John McCain knew he bore a personal responsibility for endangering his son’s life. He had supported going to war in Iraq, and when the mismanagement of the war had brought it to the precipice of calamitous failure, he had been a leading voice advocating the counter-insurgency proposed by the new American commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the surge of US forces required to execute it, which now included his youngest son. Most distressing to him was the fear his position as a candidate for president would bring unwanted publicity to Jimmy’s presence in Iraq, and attract the special interest of our enemies there.
He traveled to New Hampshire that evening to keep an appointment the following day to argue again that the “surge” offered his country one last chance to rescue Iraq and America’s security interests from the dire consequences of losing a war in the heart of the Middle East to Baathist insurgents, foreign terrorists, and Shia militia.
Most reporters attending the speech were as little interested in his argument as were, I suspect, many members of the Concord, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, who hosted him that day. Many reporters there, including some of the most senior political reporters in Washington, had come for another purpose: to see if John McCain would put a formal end to his once front-running campaign that had just that week earned widespread ridicule when it collapsed in bankruptcy, animosity from party rank and file for his support of comprehensive immigration reform, staff departures, and recriminations from various camps of warring supporters.
But the object of their diminished interest and ridicule is a man who possesses such mental and physical toughness that, after 20 years of closely observing him, I am as impressed by his fortitude today as I was the first time I encountered it. Soldiering on through any adversity is not a brave choice for him. It is not a choice at all. It is an imperative.
So he went to New Hampshire to resume on his terms a campaign that all Washington, always eager to achieve a consensus narrative for political misfortune, believed doomed. The day after his Concord speech, he held a town hall meeting in Claremont, N.H., one of more than a hundred he would hold over the next six months. The candidate, his reduced staff, and the few reporters still assigned to our campaign rode around the state in rented vans until we could raise the money to hire a bus.
He put his campaign on his back, and by late November he had become a viable candidate again. Although still an underdog and always short of funding, his crowds in New Hampshire were growing bigger and more enthusiastic. More reporters were showing up to cover him, attracted by the open access he gave them. His experienced and hardworking New Hampshire staff performed beyond all reasonable expectations, animated by their loyalty and affection for the man who depended on them. The national staff, which included both old McCain hands and veterans of the Bush campaign, fought together like soldiers in a foxhole, every one of us inspired by the patriotism, courage, and resilience of the candidate we served.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
Scarborough to McCain: "I'm Sorry"
Mark Salter is the former chief of staff to Senator John McCain and senior adviser to the McCain for President campaign.
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Mark Salter is the former chief of staff to Senator John McCain and senior adviser to the McCain for President campaign.
Ignore the Skeptics: We Can Win Afghanistan
Mark Salter is the former chief of staff to Senator John McCain and senior adviser to the McCain for President campaign.
I am so pleased that you're proud of the guy. I'm also aware that 1/2 of marketing a product is convincing the buyer after the fact that they've bought the right one. No real opportunity to do that here, though, with the 365 to 162 (projected) result.
I read your justifications and the selective choices you highlight and I don't doubt that you were able to pick and choose things to celebrate. Maybe we all will do the same, later. For now, I recall how angry McCain appeared, how he called his opponent 'THAT ONE' in a debate and how he, in announcing her, ogled the woman who he'd had foisted upon him when it was plain Tom Ridge or Lieberman (can't type this w/o feeling sick to my stomache) were more to his liking re: governance. Bill Kristol--whose idea was it to listen to this clown?
You would have lost even if you'd chosen someone less laughable than Bible Spice, but you would have done so with the respect of people you respect yourselves, not just that of frothing, ignorant (I didn't say stupid, just ignorant) clay-Americans who can't tell the difference between a Christian with dark skin and the boogeyman you tried to make of him.
Sounds like Salter has taken a long deep swig of the McCain Kool-Aid.
You are insulting the intelligence of the American people. We didn't need Obama to tell us that McCain was likely to continue Bush policies. The McCain campaign, with it's endless smears, was so similar to Bush (Rove) campaign tactics that the similarity was obvious. I was a big fan of the "classic McCain", but the campaign turned me off to the "new McCain". Although I was raised Republican, the party's focus on fear, hatred and lies disgusts me. Apparently, many other people feel the same way.
What's missing here is any real acknowledgment that the choices the McCain campaign made -- Palin, suspending the campaign, trying desperately to link Obama to "radicals" -- were POOR CHOICES. I don't subscribe to the idea that people are one-dimensional. John McCain is not evil. Hell, even George Bush isn't. They are complex figures with many beliefs, motivations and contradictions. And they make mistakes. Big ones.
When all three of the Republican candidates turned out to believe more in Bible stories than evolution I felt that there was the possibility of returning to the 1850's, not withstanding John McCain's service to his country. I admired McCain and think he might have made a good president at an earlier time.
Get a room.
Are you proud that McCain stooped to insinuating that his opponent was a terrorist, a radical, a far-left liberal and un patriotic?
Wow. There is so much revisionist history in the piece, I wonder what parallel universe Mr. Salter has been living in the last 22 months.
The world according to Mark Salter. John McCain believed the pr spin Sarah Palin put out....the reformer...and he was not smart enough to 1. Have her veted and 2. Meet with her himself because if he had done either or both he would have seen what the rest of us saw...not ready for prime time. Shame on him and he said country first.
This article is a waste of time. I was expecting insight as to how the once honorable John McCain came to employ the same robo call firm that smeared him against Bush. I wanted some specifics as to how McCain chose to make 'Joe the Plumber' who is unlicensed and does not pay his taxes his personal 'hero.' At last, during his graceful concession speech, the John McCain I remembered began to emerge again. There's always hope.
I've respected John McCain when he crossed party lines to get things done. I respected John McCain when he was working in the senate as a real "maverick", not worrying about about what his colleagues thought about a particular bill. I's a pity, but the John McCain i'll remember Is the one who would sell his soul to be President.
sandman
This article is proof that the McCain campaign staff was, and apparently still is, out of touch with reality. John McCain ran a terrible campaign. He turned into the polar opposite of what made him attractive and endearing to so many moderates. His VP selection was disasterous. His message was erratic. His attacks on his opponent led his supporters to become an angry, hate-filled mob. But, according to Salter, it was only America's displeasure with Bush and the opponents ability to fool the American electorate with his eloquence that lost McCain the election?
Time to break through the bubble you have been living in the last couple of years, Mr. Salter, and join the real world.
Nice try, Mr. Salter. Where was John McCain in the middle of the campaign when he encouraged his VP to go out there and make comments that were so reprehensible that people started to call Mr. Obama a terrorist. Nice try, trying to rehabilitate Mr. McCain's image. As someone who staunchly supported him in 2000 against George Bush, I am deeply disappointed in him. You would have been well served to not write anything. This is very transparent.
I am not a first time reader of this column. I have written at least 10 comments for cheat sheet. E-mail me at kennysibbett@gmail.com
I voted for Obama, but am constantly amazed at the contemptuous nature of many liberals, demonstrated quite often on this site in the comments section. I have come to believe that many liberals are happy to be for the common person, unless that person happens to be so stupid as to be a republican. If the plumber had challenged McCain, no investigation of his past and no character assassination would have occurred. McCain wasn't for me for many reasons, but he is an honorable man (as the latest evidence, look at his gracious concession speech) who did not lose that distinction because he made poor choices. Or would you say that Obama lost his honor when he asserted in many southern commercials, that McCain was anti-hispanic and anti-immigrant, against all evidence? No in both cases.
In no uncertain terms, it was the Republicans voting in lock step for every Bush idea or nearly so that sunk every one of them for me. McCain's pick of Sarah Palin and his insistence on running the Atwater/Rove/Schmidt campaign strategy was just digging a deep hole deeper.
I voted for mccain in the 2000 primary in my state (as an independent, I was not allowed to vote in the Dem primary at the time), and I would have voted for him in the 2000 election had he been the candidate.
Salter ignores exactly the reason that I believe put this election past mccain when he writes along the lines of "the R after his name was too much for some people to overcome".
It wasn't the R. It was playing to all the other Rs. McCain's appeal was that he had *never* done that. Before now.
And he did it big. Where his record was strong on bipartisanship, it was erased by rallying the far right. Where he once stood as an independent, he then fell over the body of failed conservative policy.
Salter is right about this: McCain *was* there in all of those places defending his center-ist record. But he was also on TV (a lot, in my state) and the internet, touting a completely different record.
Now we know which one the voters heard.
sounds like a litany of excuses based on circumstance. mccain chose to run the campaign he did--based on fear mongering and reactionary measures--and in the process devalued his brand.
"It seemed to us there were more investigative stories about our candidate's spouse than about Senator Obama."
How can a person take anything he says seriously when he makes a weak, whiny comment like that.
Poor you, poor McCain, Palin was a fabulous choice.
Someone already mentioned, there is no mention at all of the crappy, divisive and fear-mongering choices these candidates and their campaign made along the way.
What a waste of space this article is. It's just a big whine-fest.
Seriously Wolverine? You think that the background research on "Joe the Plumber" was merely a liberal smear campaign? Both sides are looking for any edge that they can get, and when a major forcus of the campaign becomes one person, you can bet that he is going to get put through the ringer. Did the liberal media keep him from getting his plumber's license? or paying his back taxes?
The McCain campaign used the same "liberal media conspiracy" excuse about Sara Palin's horrible showing on the public stage. This faux-offense from the conservatives when the other side adopts a page from their own play book just doesn't fly for me.
Your VP candidate was winking at the American people! You lost all credibility as a serious campaign.
Someone in the camp should have stopped McCain from performing self-satire. He turned himself into a caricature with his insistent "My friends, I know how to (fill in the blank)" when it was obvious he had no such ability. "I know how to catch Osama bin Laden." Dragging in the Governor Mrs. Palin only heightened the comedy, especially when she opened her mouth.
Talk about trying to save face. I actually liked McCain before this campaign started. It has to be one of the worst run campaigns I've witnessed in a couple decades. Yes McCain had an uphill battle as a Republican - but the campaigned strategist killed his chances in picking Pallin and focussing on Ayer instead of issues. I would guess that not too many independents voted for Pallin - can we please remove her from the stage now. If she plans on running in 2012 don't forget she will be almost 50 - the age that women disappear from the media. How will they feel about her then? I'll be glad to see her gone.
Regardless of the campaign that John McCain ran, he is an honorable man whom deserves the respect of the American people. He is unselfish, sincere and compassionate. America felt it was time for a change and spoke. What a defining moment in history. I pray for Barack Obama and hope that with the people's support, he can lead this great nation where it needs to be...A nation of unity, hope, morality and prosperity.
I was reading because I like John McCain...then you got bitter and started making your excuses...don't insult the electorate by blaming the R next to your name....maybe blame
- choosing a moronic VP candidate for a 72 year old man
- a candidate with the charisma of a phone book
- a candidate who has based his entire career on military training
- real americans for not voting enough
- the fact that you can't win without being religious
Thank you.
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