Reading the NY Times magazine piece on the McCain campaign, and when this election is over and done with, Steve Schmidt is not going to look good. Going through the article, almost every piece of fail was birthed and nursed into maturity by Schmidt, starting with this gem:
The smartest bit of political wisdom he ever heard was dispensed by George W. Bush one spring day at the White House residence in 2004…
With that as your starting point, you can see where this baby is heading. Some snippets:
Scene by scene, McCain failed to deliver the performance that had been promised. Of course, this was no mere movie. America was in crisis. Perhaps with the Bush theory in mind, Steve Schmidt had advised McCain to “go in all the way” on the financial crisis so as to reveal his candidate’s true character.
***“For better or for worse, our campaign has been fought from tactic to tactic,” one senior adviser glumly acknowledged to me in early October, just after Schmidt received authorization from McCain to unleash a new wave of ads attacking Obama’s character. “So this is the new tactic.”
***“Well, going forward, that’s what you should say,” Schmidt replied. He encouraged McCain to denounce the Democrats for advocating a withdrawal of troops — a kind of surrender in the face of victory. Thus did Schmidt initiate the No Surrender Tour late in the summer of 2007, a push through the early primary states that saw John McCain surrounded by war veterans while he lashed out at weak-kneed war critics.
***Regardless, this summer Schmidt sought to convince his voluble candidate that the press was no longer his friend. By July, a curtain was literally drawn to separate McCain from the reporters traveling on his plane. He no longer mingled with them, and press conferences were drastically curtailed.
***Eventually, it was Schmidt who blurted out the epiphany concerning Obama. “Face it, gentlemen,” he said. “He’s being treated like a celebrity.”
The others grasped the concept — a celebrity like J-Lo! or Britney! — and exultation overtook the room.
***Then for a half-hour or so, the group reviewed names that had been bandied about in the past: Gov. Tim Pawlenty (of Minnesota) and Gov. Charlie Christ (of Florida); the former governors Tom Ridge (Pennsylvania) and Mitt Romney (Massachusetts); Senator Joe Lieberman (Connecticut); and Mayor Michael Bloomberg (New York). From a branding standpoint, they wondered, what message would each of these candidates send about John McCain? McInturff’s polling data suggested that none of these candidates brought significantly more to the ticket than any other.
“What about Sarah Palin?” Schmidt asked.
And on and on and on it goes, with one person’s fingerprints on every single piece of fail. And that is just from the first few pages of the nine page story.
Really, read the whole thing. It terrifies me that there is still a chance these guys could win.
And by the way- Sarah Palin was not vetted one tiny bit. They had no clue what they were getting into, and someone could make a hell of a blog post by going back and chronicling the right-wing noise machine and blogger pushback in which they asserted she was thoroughly vetted, because this piece just blows that BS out of the water.
Comrade Jake
Cole, you really should update with this video of Chuck Todd discussing the potential, upcoming implosion. That and the Matthews’ obliteration of Nancy Pfotenhauer are, to put it simply, full of win.
Zifnab
We need to get him and Mark Penn together on some sort of Super Extreme Political Advisory Committee and assign them to any douchebag who ever tries to run for high office again.
No one could have predicted that mindlessly hiring the same tired hacks who perpetually gave bad advice throughout an entire previous administration would result in you getting bad advice throughout your Presidential run.
Five bucks says Schmitt has McCain campaigning in California in the last week of the race as a stirring tribute to Dear Leader.
jake 4 that 1
I don’t care for his music, but I hope The Boss sues.
DFD
I can’t bring myself to call it an epic fail until the votes are counted.
(edit) Is there a video clip of a slow motion fail?
Zuzu's Petals
Well, as Steve lives in my town, I have this fantasy of bumping into him on the street and telling him to his face that he has damaged the country. In my fantasy he is embarrassed and crestfallen…he just can’t run from the shame.
Ah, one can dream.
Tim F.
That is the opposite of what you should tell him. By spiking his own campaign Steve Schmidt may have saved us all.
Comrade Jake
I love that part. It just reads like the script for a bad porn movie. Not that I would know anything about that.
r€nato
really! you don’t say! I never would have guessed that by observing them!
Well, there’s a winning tactic… take what is perhaps your biggest asset and turn it into one of your biggest liabilities.
Really, in a way, it’s a bit scary to think that if McCain had had someone better than Schmidt running the show, this could be a completely different race. McCain is still a terrible candidate but so was Bush and Rove managed to sell him to enough of America, twice.
(…looks like Tim said the same thing only more succinctly)
(yes, I know Gore won the popular vote and had the election stolen from him in 2000)
jake 4 that 1
@Tim F.: Yeah, ZP. If Obama wins, shake his hand for me: "Bless you sir. Bless you for making the GOP into the political equivalent of 20 clowns falling out of a little bitty car AND a pie in a society matron’s face!"
And then wash your hand.
DougJ
They spent more time picking out her wardrobe than they did vetting her.
kid bitzer
"McInturff’s polling data"
man, the perfect name for fake grass-roots.
Stuck in the Funhouse
That’s the understatement of the year. If they do happen to pull it out, the entire world will shat their britches in unison. It will be time to grab a shovel and dig yourself a personal bunker, crawl in, and hope for the best.
phil
Charlie Christ? Nice copyediting, NY Times.
Comrade Jake
So I guess the other thing Palin did in this NBC interview was to announce that she’ll be releasing her medical records. Todd and Williams told Matthews that this was clearly a surprised to her campaign staff.
I wonder if Sully has heard the news yet?
DougJ
At least Charlie Crist would have been able to pick out his own clothes.
DougJ
If they do happen to pull it out, the entire world will shat their britches in unison. It will be time to grab a shovel and dig yourself a personal bunker, crawl in, and hope for the best.
I’m not kidding when I say we could see the mother of all bank runs if he wins. I’m putting all money into cash, preferably Euros under a McPalin presidency.
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
@r€nato:
Isn’t that a Rove tactic they use against their opponent? Wait… No… It couldn’t be…
Darkrose
ZP–you’re in the Sac area?
I’m adding Schmidt to my list of "people whose lawns I should dump the cat box on", right after Ward Connerly.
Jeff
@Comrade Jake: I loved the pulling a Bullworth line. I cannot see Palin doing it, she is lining up for 2012 and has always been dishonest. However, I could easily see McCain doing it, especially during a concession speech.
jrg
You’d think that if McCain knew how to "win wars", he’d know that you don’t do it by "fighting the last war".
You’d think that if McCain knew the difference between "tactics" and "strategy", he would have some sort of "strategy".
FWIW, I don’t think McCain is stupid or dishonorable, he’s just too impotent to deal with the RNC and the Republican base. No one is gullible enough to get GOP ratfucked, so the GOP turned ratfucking into a circle-jerk. 51% is not a strategy, it’s a number, and Schmidt is not the problem, he’s a symptom.
jake 4 that 1
OT: The GOP wants Bush to cut funding to ACORN.
Christ, that man is a 24K piece of shit.
jake 4 that 1
WHISKEY. TANGO. FOXTROT?
OMFG. The man sucks the moldy goat dick.
Oh man, I am so angry.
Zuzu's Petals
@Darkrose:
Yep, and … excellent idea.
sidereal
Assuming Obama wins this election and the Dems pick up as many seats in the Senate and House as it looks like they’re going to get, there is going to very quickly be a critical moment for the Republicans and conservatives in general afterwards. Either they’re going to blame the loss on system factors: notably the souring economy and the massive disapproval of a sitting President of the same party, or they’re going to accept that they ran a losing campaign with a losing message.
If they think that the loss was just bad luck in a bad environment, and they make no changes to their platform, their personnel, and their inventory of political strategies and tactics, they are going to be in the wilderness for a while. They’ll be a regional party of the deep South and the Rocky Mountains for 40 years.
Despite being a (recent) Democrat, I wouldn’t be happy to see this, because I think the Republic suffers from having one entrenched majority party and one crazy minority party. I’m gratified to see that there are ideological moves among the Douthats and the Drehers and the Friedersdorfs trying to rebuild the GOP around more solid principles.
Zifnab
@jake 4 that 1:
Are you kidding? This is a laugh riot. Boehner can go out back and pound sand. The Bush DoJ can’t find its dick with both hands and a road map. They couldn’t investigate themselves out of a paper bag. And Boehner wants to send them off tilting at windmills?
Sure, go for it. This’ll keep those rat fuckers busy till January.
Zuzu's Petals
@Tim F.:
Well, that’s a point.
But lowering the discourse to the level he did has hurt the country … and made me actually fear for the candidate.
jake 4 that 1
@Zifnab: If he’s thinking anything at all he’s trying to catapult a particularly nasty bit of propoganda about a group that’s already had to endure death threats and destruction of property, thanks to his fellow scum buckets.
Soylent Green
My slogan for Obama’s handling of McCain’s campaign: "Give them enough rope-a-dope."
GSD
McCain ran his campaign like Schmidt.
Couldn’t happen to a bigger jagoff.
Now to see McConnell in the unemployment line, along with Liddy Dole, John Sunono, Suxby Chumpbliss, Blo and Glo Coleman and a the Alaskan Hulk.
-GSD
Jeff
They’re cylons!!!
Not My Fault
@sidereal:
Or … They can blame the LIEberal media for everything.
Something tells me that no one will learn anything no matter what the outcome.
Soylent Green
GOP control of the Rockies? Trending away if not gone in Montana, New Mexico and Colorado, moving bluer in the others, even in Utah.
They can keep Alabama.
Notorious P.A.T.
Compare that to Obama’s campaign manager, who sounds like a genius. They were talking about him on MSNBC today, quoting from an upcoming piece in the New Republic or something. This guy pushed all the right buttons.
Jason Lefkowitz
I’m no fan of Steve Schmidt, but it’s worth remembering when reading "what went wrong" stories that all the sources for such a story are people inside the campaign, and when the ship starts to sink every one of them has the same agenda — to make sure that the blame for the failure gets pinned on somebody else.
As the saying goes, "success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan."
So whenever I read a "what went wrong" story where every mistake can be traced back to one person, I start to wonder how much of it is really due to that person actually having been full of fail, and how much of it is due to them having rubbed his/her colleagues the wrong way enough times that when the reporters came knocking those colleagues decided to hold them up as the Judas goat.
ethan salto
I keep getting the impression, from this article and from closely watching the McCain campaign, that Schmidt is Just Not That Bright.
No long-term strategy, lurching from crisis to crisis, throwing one Hail Mary after another; these are not the tactics of someone able to conceptualize the race in an abstract way.
This is certainly not to take anything away from McCain. Anyone who puts their accumulated reputation and future prospects in the hands of a dim bulb can’t be shining that brightly themselves.
Jason Lefkowitz
@Notorious P.A.T.:
It’s funny how the guy who won is always a genius brimming over with wisdom and insight, and the guy who lost is always an idiot who couldn’t even tie his own shoes. You know?
Polish the Guillotines
Fixed.
Stuck in the Funhouse
Don’t know if anybody watched ABC World News tonight, but George Stephan whatever gave about as gloomy a report for Goopers imaginable. It was from field reports "from repubs themselves" concerning the truly incredible Obama ground game unfolding that is something altogether awesome. Made me feel a little more confident.
Polish the Guillotines
Sometime earlier this year, my wife and I watched The Smartest Guys In the Room, and it just totally hit me that this was the whole Bush/Rove governing philosophy. These guys totally buy into their own hype ignoring all outward reality and take for granted that they can fleece the rubes with impunity.
Zuzu's Petals
@Polish the Guillotines:
Yeah, except with the height difference I’d probably end up hitting his knees. Not that that’s a bad thing.
But I tend towards those sort of high school fantasies, where he would really want my approval and I would tell him off instead. And he would be devastated.
Stuck in the Funhouse
Here is Mccain unbound. Watch the video for a belly laugh at Magoo in his element.
SamFromUtah
@Tim F.: By spiking his own campaign Steve Schmidt may have saved us all.
Right on. Whatever McWorse is paying Schmidt, he should double it.
I have a feeling it’s a princely sum to start with – as Penn showed, fail that epic doesn’t come cheap.
DaveInLA
@sidereal:
The GOP is being taken over by Theocons with Palin being the high prietess. The GOP Theocons are already spewing that this elections is a "Good vs. Evil" battle. The GOP nuts don’t have the mental capacity to blame the loss on anything rational.
As far as Palin preparing for 2012, there is NO WAY IN HELL that the other heir apparents are going to let her waltz into the 2012 nomination. Mittums, Mike and the bench of second stringers are going to start cutting at Palin’s Achilles tendons starting November 5th. "If Leiberman/Huckabee/Romney was on the ticket, we would have won…" No Fucking Way they pin this on McCain and the cronies that ran his campaign.
Polish the Guillotines
@Zuzu’s Petals:
I hear ya. I live near an airbase where President Chimp lands when he’s in town and I have this fantasy where he knocks on my door for a photo op and I tell him to Cheney himself.
jake 4 that 1
And the GOP is the sorriest bunch of bastards you could ever hope to find.
Good point though, especially when the candidate is running as the super meaty manerrific maverick. Here’s a guy who (according to their narrative) is tough enough to chase Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, while fixing our economy with one hand and bitch slapping the Russians, Iranians, liberals and anyone else who isn’t a RealAmerican(TM) with the other. (And did I mention that he’s a POW?)
And yet he is too weak or inattentive or maybe too doggone nice to struggle when asked to eat a big old Schmidt sandwich.
Error. Does not compute.
Brian J
I’m going to read it later, but before I go to the gym, a few thoughts/questions:
1. How the hell do McCain’s actions during the days when the financial crisis shit really hit the fan reflect going all in? He was bouncing from one ridiculous tactic to the next, as if he was a third-grader hopped up on sugar. Regardless, he did reveal his true character: he’s impulsive, irrational, and completely immature.
2. So McCain authorized the attacks himself? This goes against the claims from some in the media that it was others who forced McCain to adopt certain tactics and the claims from the McCain camp that Obama’s refusal to do town hall forums forced McCain to be so nasty, but then, those explanations were absurd.
3. There’s nothing wrong with a candidate appealing to voters in an election. That’s what you have to do to get elected. But when you select a candidate solely on the basis of possible electoral appeal, it reflects a shallowness of judgment and a flaw in character that’s too hard to describe. McCain’s pick of Palin reveals a big reason why he shouldn’t be president.
gbear
Maybe those other candidates will dig a shit moat along the Alaskan border.
Polish the Guillotines
@Jason Lefkowitz:
True. But the ultimate blame lies with McCain. He made the choice to hire these guys. Doesn’t matter whether it was his only hope for victory or not. The bottom line is he’s the candidate, he sets the tone. At the very least, he has veto power.
If he doesn’t — I mean, if he doesn’t have control of he own campaign — then he’s merely a puppet. And that’s not good no matter how you slice it.
Soylent Green
From that NYT story:
So to even the score, they let snarky right-wing bloggers write their narrative. Brilliant.
Jay B.
I found this somewhere on the Internets today. Schmidt’s the scapegoat. Even if McCain was running a competent campaign, Bush was the problem all along. Molly’s still fucking right and she’s been dead for a couple of years:
Molly Ivins was right back in 2004
"Well, look at it this way: You cannot keep a dog that kills chickens, no matter how fine a dog it is otherwise.
My friend John Henry Faulk always said the way to break a dog of that habit is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog’s neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad the dog won’t be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won’t kill chickens again.
The Bush Administration is going to be wired around the neck of the American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.
I can think of nothing more likely to convince the people not to vote for Republicans again for a long, long time than four more years of George W. Bush."
Amen, Molly.
r€nato
if you follow fivethirtyeight.com, there are countless reports by their road crew contrasting full-to-overflowing Obama offices with McCain offices which either are closed on the weekend (WTF?) or just very, very slow.
Honestly, if Obama does not completely swamp McCain I will be shocked. Obama has an amazing ground game and it sounds like McCain has next to none.
Brian J
Hey, did anyone catch this gem of a comment? Apparently, the three-time Miss Virginia and University of Virginia honor student Kristi Lauren Glakas said that Palin, a former beauty queen contestant herself, was giving people like them a bad name by hiding from the press. The final line of the piece on the site was a quote from Glaksas which said, "Even I’ve been interviewed by Chris Matthews."
Wow, just…so full of WIN.
Zuzu's Petals
From the Times piece:
Unbelievable.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
The myriad differences between these two campaigns seem very stark. I expect the end result will be a lot of EV’s in the Obama column and a royal embarrassment for the GOP on election night.
Obama is running a once in a lifetime WOW campaign while the McCain camp is totally asleep.
Conservatively Liberal
Agreed. While Schmidt may have come up with many of the ideas, you can bet that others did so too. I think Davis would sacrifice Schmidt to save his career, heck I bet every one of them would do the same to each other. There is no honor amongst thieves and this gang is no exception.
As much as I despised some of the tactics during the primary, Hillary did a lot to set Obama up for a win while she was losing. Hillary, her campaign and their supporters (especially the rabid ones) slammed Obama in every which way they could contrive, giving him an opportunity to experience, respond to and practice for what the general could (and would) bring. This allowed him and his campaign to fine tune the responses they would use to parry the attacks before using them in the general.
Using the primary as a map, his campaign could plan responses in advance for the expected attacks, leaving his team with extra (and valuable) time to concentrate on the unexpected attacks. I have to hand it to Obama, while he has a brilliant team behind him, it is clear that it took someone with extraordinary vision to assemble the disparate personalities and get them to mesh into what has become a formidable campaign team.
I am damn glad that Obama has come along and knocked the sleeping Democrats on their asses. He has shown that people will admire someone who can stand their ground and calmly deliver reasoned arguments and responses.
gbear
Obama just opened another office in St. Paul this week, which is crazy given that St Paul is already going to go at least 75% Obama. They really are going for it at the ground level and I think the push here is to help make sure Franken beats Coleman (St Paul HATES Coleman already from when he was mayor).
I’m not going to believe that Obama will swamp McCain until it happens. The last couple threads have been reading like a party because things seem to be going SO our way. I don’t see Obama as being capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but there are still a lot of forces working to prevent his presidency from becoming a reality. I don’t want the party to end after Nov. 4.
gbear
I wonder how much time Obama’s camp spent in meetings just trying to brainstorm what the McCain camp would throw out next. They seem to have a well prepared answer to everything that’s come their way, but there must have been a move or two that left the Obama group saying "Whoa!", probably followed by uncontrollable laughter and then another 10 minutes spent coming up with a thorough and successful rebutal.
John Cole
Read the story. This was not a he-said she-said in which they all crap on Schmidt. They specifically refused to be interviewed, in fact. These are the author’s observations.
Stuck in the Funhouse
Now Redstate has now gone full bore fashion sleuth to offset the political damage from the reported Obamas/Mcpalin fashion gap that is so critical in this election.
They may be on to something, with application of a little republican math. It will take a shitpot full of Burberry suits at 900 a pop to make it to 150 grand. But by golly they’re in this to win.
And a special whine coming from our sunny patriots that puts we "running dogs" on notice.
Obamunista Stuck is what they call me, Obamunista is my game.
Well, I for one would not want Caribou Barbie to be without a fancy Bikini for the Cement Pond.
Brian J
One last comment, before I really, really go to the gym.
Your statement just shows that Obama has grown as a candidate. Last time, his supporters got a little cocky and let up in their support, and there is some belief that this led to Clinton’s victory in New Hampshire. We’ve been hearing a lot from all levels that now is not the time to rest, so to me, this says that he’s learned his lesson. To cite just one example, I read an article that said there was a big white board in the front of one massive Obama office that simply said "NEW HAMPSHIRE" in big letters, greeting volunteers as they walked in each day. If it’s true he’s the sort of guy who can learn from his mistakes, it gives me even more confidence in him as a candidate and as a potential leader.
Ecks
Holy shit. I just got the "this is the story of william ayers" flyer in the mail! Just when you think you’ve worked through all the ratfuckery, it actually shows up on your doorstep in the (dead tree) flesh.
Now I can’t decide whether to throw it out post haste, or to hang on to it to wave at the TV on Nov 4 :)
gbear
I wonder if they’ve found this story yet?
Save it as a souvenier of the day the world changed. I kind of wish I’d get one too.
jibeaux
Does that article have an entry form for the McCain campaign’s "Win A Lifetime Supply of Clothes Courtesy of Republican Donors"? Because I want to enter that.
r€nato
I don’t wish to engage in premature triumphalism; we haven’t won shit yet, and I know that.
But really, it’s truly awesome to watch Obama’s ground game. They get it. They have thought through all the little things and executed very well. It gives me great confidence in his presidency should he win in two weeks. We are going to get an amazingly talented and highly competent president. Also one who is articulate and even knows the Constitution backwards and forwards.
He may not line up with you or me on every single issue. But really, let’s be thankful for what we have (or are soon to get). Obama may well be an even better president than we ever had any right to hope for.
Fulcanelli
@Stuck in the Funhouse: I’ll be grabbing a shovel all right, but not for digging a hole to hide.
Jason Lefkowitz
From the story, with relevant bits in italic:
I’m not arguing that the story the article tells is false (how would I know) — just that it’s definitely informed by information the author received from unnamed sources inside the campaign. And as it became clear that the McCain campaign was threatening to become an epic disaster, those sources almost certainly would have evolved agendas of their own that involve keeping as much of the fallout off their CVs as possible.
Comrade Jake
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
I’m not sure how to put this gently, but, I saw the Stephanopoulos piece, and, it was a massive understatement. I’ve read about probably 25 or so qualitatively different things the Obama campaign is doing to GOTV. And then there are just as many things that I know about through my family (many are volunteering, in a couple of different swing states), and have not seen written up anywhere. Most of these consist of stuff I never would have imagined on my own.
It is an exceptionally well-organized system they have in place, and people are extremely motivated. It’s a little bit scary, to be frank.
Stuck in the Funhouse
I will also have an altogether different caliber instrument for that.
Stuck in the Funhouse
I guess we could argue how big big really is, but I’m just not in the mood for that.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@gbear:
Aw shit gbear, I laughed so hard at that, I think I fractured a rib. I guess this means Obama ain’t got no sole.
Comrade Jake
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
Dude, I wasn’t arguing with you. Christ.
jrg
Queue up the Couric interview, stat!
jibeaux
Can I just open thread this a little more, please, since mocking Sarah Palin is always appropriate?
Source
Can’t you just hear the cry for help? Here’s the prayer version: God, please don’t make me listen to Bocephus any more. He’s not nearly as talented as his dad or even his son, and since he is a Satan worshipper I do regret saying that.. Please, God, send someone other than Bocephus, just once. I have to campaign for, gosh, like six weeks. Please. I’ll give the Donna Karans to charity when it’s done, I promise.
Joshua Norton
Down in the polls. Down in money. McCain has ’em exactly where he wants ’em.
The new up-coming meme is that all the Epic Fail is Caribou Barbie’s fault.
Chuck Butcher
Steve Schmidt my ass. There is a boss, one boss and that guy’s name is John Sidney McCain. If you want to leave McPOW one shred of credibility go ahead and blame Schmidt as though the candidate has a pull string on his back and no volition. McBarbie may be a puppet but I haven’t seen any hands up her ass. (despite Hewitt’s wishes)
Since most everbody here today likes Obama do you mean to suggest that this is all about Axelrod and Plouffe or that you actually take Obama seriously? I don’t take anything away from that team, extraordinary performance. But it is either Obama or we live in a manufactured political world where these people are empty vessels filled by Machiavellian operatives who do know something and can think.
You cannot propose one thing for Obama and not have it true of the McCain operation. They may be as lame as a three legged horse but that has to do with ground operations, distribution of assets, and the occassional public statement not approved of by the candidate (um- Blackberry?). McCain’s campaign is failing because he is exactly as he’s portraying himself, he’s been like this all along, media BS aside.
Comrade Jake
My wife and I filled out our absentee NC ballots this week. I wanted to vote for McCain, but I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t vote for a guy whose middle name is "Sidney". I just think a name like that would embolden the terrorists.
kommrade jakevich
Quasi-conservative?! Blasphemy! It must be RealConservativeAmerican(TM) or NOTHING!1
They could just take their practice of ripping off artists to the next step and kidnap performers. Maybe she was trying to make some comment about Music Industry Liberal Bias but it comes off as an insult to Pat Boone and every "Christian" "Rock" band out there. "Fuck you Jonahs Brothers!"
Dennis - SGMM
Stryper?
Bwahahahaha!
tripletee
I would just like to point out that Steve Schmidt is one of Karl Rove’s proteges. Some of the splashback fail from this should land on the Turdblossom too. Evil genius my ass.
gbear
The late, great Johnny Ramone for one. & nothing quasi about it.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Comrade Jake:
you said I’m not sure how to put this gently, but, I saw the Stephanopoulos piece, and, it was a massive understatement.
I’m not sure how to put this gently –Disagreement, arguing, whatever dude.
Comrade Jake
@tripletee:
Rove got his comeuppance at the 2006 elections. I’ll never forget the NPR interview he did just before them, when he disagreed with the projections everyone was looking at. He told Bob Siegel "you’re entitled to your math and I’m entitled to my math".
Then he got his ass handed to him. That was pretty awesome.
jmbl
I like the bit in the article where the author asked a campaign consultant genius ‘aside from her experience, do you know if she has any knowledge of the issues of the day?’ And the genius replied ‘No, I don’t’. Unbeleevable.
The McCain campaign people are complete fools (and I hope they continue to be fools, for our sake, until election day). They tried to run the usual reactionary GOP scare script without understanding anything about how, when, where or why it worked in the past. Recently they have been frantically pulling on levers and spinning the wheels, not realizing that the gears are stripped, and they are tearing their precious vote machine apart. Oh yeah, they also appear to think that GOTV is something you order flunkies to do when you have a few minutes to call up a guy a guy you know knows. That is nice too.
I hope the reactionary wing of the GOP is crushed humiliated obliterated completely. I’m a Democrat, but it is just too scary and risky to run against nutcases and cranks every four years. I want a GOP where a guy like Hagel would have a chance to run for national office. Hagel was practically tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail this cycle, and that kind of nonsense is not good for the country.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Sarah Palin: one of Hell’s Belles
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Really, you couldn’t think of a better reason than that?
My father was a Sydney, my daughter is a Sydney middle name. You’re getting personal now.
I thought you were a good guy, no more!
Brian J
From what little I know of him, I could see him being a decent president. He seems like the sort of person that we’d rarely agree with, but could do a good job while in office. Of course, that sort of quality probably puts a hole in your wish that he or someone like him would ever advance as a Republican, but that’s the GOP for you.
tripletee
@Comrade Jake:
Isn’t Rove the architect of the "creating our own reality" theory? Yeah, that’s really worked out well for him. And Bachmann. And Palin. And every advisor in the McCain camp.
Schaudenfreude overload, I gotta go lay down.
nicethugbert
Eight years of disaster and repeating the same old B.S., no that’s not the problem. It’s all Ollie Schmidt’s fault! Guess what, all the rethugs do is fuk up everything and we are tired of it. Schmidt or no Schmidt, Obama would be kicking ass anyway. He’s that good and lip stick or no rethugs are still pigs, "haha charade you are …."
The Moar You Know
Christ, I’ll do Incoherent Spice a favor. Metallica and Ted Nugent. However, I think Metallica is smart enough to not piss off their fans, and they largely keep it under wraps.
Ted Nugent has no fans, so it doesn’t matter as much. They should have him play her onto the stage with "Cat Scratch Fever", and then he can do the thing where he shoots the flaming arrow – maybe into a big "McCain/Palin ’08" sign, or if they really want to play to the McCain base, a cross drenched in gasoline.
Polish the Guillotines
So full of win.
AHHH! Do NOT let that harpy taint my favorite band. This is so wrong. So wrong. (Though "What do you do for money, honey?" off Back In Black seems appropriate.)
Must now take ten showers while screaming "Highway to Hell" at the top of my lungs.
kommrade jakevich
@CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII: God damn it.
Now I’ll never be able to listen to that song without cracking up.
"If you’re into eeevil you’re a friend of mine."
Now wait. What AC/DC song? And I thought AC/DC was on the very, very, very long list of bands that cause young children to worship Satan and eat their parents.
gbear
I just LOL’d and scared the cat.
The Moar You Know
So do I. I don’t agree with most of what he espouses, but if he were running for office I wouldn’t feel an overwhelming urge to stockpile food and ammunition. This election cycle, I feel as though I really should.
Keith
I almost start expecting to hear quotes from Schmidt about how Brawndo has electrolytes, which are, coincidentally, what plants crave.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Fixt!
Oh, and "you’re welcome!" :)
ImJohnGalt
Can we have a Balloon-Juice party at the inauguration in January? I’ve already arranged accommodations.
Anastasius
Ugh, does this piece get any better? I am at Narrative 2 and so far it’s: "Schmidt, loving family man, shunned by his colleagues despite his 12 years of work as conservative operative and never rewarded with a lush government job but loyally sticking to the McCain campaign even though he wasn’t paid till one day he can gained the confidence of his boss by asking: "The Surge, great strategy or greatest strategy ever?" and begging him on his knees to keep talking about his PoW experience."
passerby
Thanks for the link John.
Man, that was a great read. It’s the type of article you’d expect to see written as a post-mortem. The press (the NYT, at least) seems more willing to pants the GOP this campaign season.
Another title for this article would be "Blind Ambition". To me it aptly describes McCain, Schmidt, Davis and Palin .
@ethan salto
Agree. There’s something rambunctious about him, too.
And when I see him surrogating for McCain on TV, I get the impression that he’s a real fucker. Mean. Assholic.
I’m not buying that whole "family man" persona the author tried to weave in there either.
sidereal
So the moral is that Steve Schmidt talks like a B-grade Bond villain?
binzinerator
And how, Mr. Butcher. And a great example. As it’s Obama’s campaign, it’s surely McCain’s campaign. The buck stops with the candidate. Or the president. We must’ve forgotten that axiom of accountability after 8 years of Bush.
Mike G
My father was a Sydney, my daughter is a Sydney middle name. You’re getting personal now.
It would embolden the Australians. You know the ‘terrist-lovers’ who pulled troops out of Iraq.
They’d force us to play cricket and drink Fosters until we puked.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden."…
BruceK
Is the Yves Sant Cement fall collection really that expensive? Perfect for swimming in deep water, in any case.
liberal
@Conservatively Liberal:
Yes, he’s much better than most Dems. Though I think he’s a very good counterpuncher but not clearly that good on pure offence.
On the other hand, I really was disappointed when he caved on the drill-for-oil issue. ISTM he could have just repeated, over and over and over again, that drilling would decrease the price of gas about 5 cents in about 10 years.
liberal
@Chuck Butcher:
I agree—the McCain campaign’s tendency to flop around looking for something to stick is reminiscent of McCain’s own amazing amount of flip-flopping throughout his political career. Though on a much faster time scale…
liberal
@Brian J:
I’d have to disagree.
(1) Avedon Carol, at her blog "sideshow," keeps harping on Hagel likely having originally won his Senate seat through a connection to a voting machine company. I haven’t examined the charges, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s something there.
(2) Hagel was kind of antiwar, but he never had the balls to break with his idiotic party. Unlike Wayne Gilchrest (House, from MD, who lost his primary this year) and Jones (the freedom fries guy, of all people!).
(3) Hagel is _extremely_ pro-forced-birth. Anyone who thinks rape victims should bear their assailants’ children is completely disqualified for the presidency, IMHO.
Barbara
I read the article and, as much fun as it would be to ridicule Schmidt, I had a different reaction. You pay these people to give you ideas and to brainstorm and be creative. So Schmidt had the idea for the "celebrity" ads — but everyone in the room jumped up and said "Yes, that’s it!" and away they went. They had no other ideas of their own and they had no overarching strategy to assess whether "celebrity" fit well or badly with that strategy.
Schmidt is also not the guy who came up with the "Country First" theme — that was Salter.
McCain probably wouldn’t have even been strong enough to hang on to become the nominee were it not for Schmidt’s "intervention" in 2007.
I’m not out to defend Schmidt in particular, but the real problem was the guy he worked for. McCain thought he earned the right to be president in a POW camp in 1968 and it never even occurred to him that he would need actual governing policies to be president. That’s not the fault of Steve Schmidt.
Shaggy
@Comrade Jake: The worst porn movies are the ones that have a script, no?
King of Pants
@Conservatively Liberal: Let’s not forget Mark Salter and his insane investment in the "McCain myth," thus a) drawing a curtain of bullshit over everyone’s eyes that prevented them from seeing what was really going on and b) blinding them to the reality that just because THEY think it’s the Greatest Story Ever Told, the electorate might not agree.
Xanthippas
I think it’s fair to say that the Bush 2.0 campaign that Steve had in mind was mugged by reality.