Marc Ambinder - The McCain Decimation - The Inside Story
I read this story this morning and just shook my head. I'm no big fan of McCain and think that while he is a genuine American hero, he is no defender of conservatism. What really got me though is just how illustrative the McCain campaign is of the disaster that is our political system.
I suppose that we might never know the real story behind the shake-up in McCain's campaign but the article highlighted the frustration of McCain's campaign manager that was not given total control over messaging, spending, and the like. That amazed me. If you listen to regular Americans, conservatives or liberal, on talk radio or read them in print, it's pretty quickly apparent that what everyone longs for is principal--a politician that actually has an overarching set of principals and lives them even after they get to Washington. Now I understand that politics is a hardball sport and today's campaigns require large staffs and nimble managers to coordinate media, financing, etc. but how pathetic is it that a campaign manager demand control over messaging? And how equally pathetic is it that a candidate would even entertain that demand? Where is the politician, be they an incumbent or a newcomer, that puts his foot down and says, "this is what I believe, massaging it for the media be damned."
For too long, America has put up with grand talk from our politicians with no principled actions to follow. Even a desparate situation like immigration has been pushed to the back-burner because it's too politically volatile to debate this close to an election! Ridiculous. McCain is imploding for a number of reason but maybe he's simply just another politician who relies on a campaign manager to tell him what he believes and how to express it. Decimation, indeed.
More to come...
