Analysis: McCain hampered by campaign missteps

[bunkerbuster1]

Source: AP

By any name, Sen. John McCain is hampered by missteps and self-generated controversy in the early days of the general election campaign for the White House. Take his most recent trip through several states and the Canadian capital, a five-day span during which he courted conservatives and independents alike, raised more than $10 million and began detailing his considerable differences with Sen. Barack Obama on energy policy.

Still, on Tuesday, he criticized his rival for proposing a windfall profits tax on the oil industry. The attack was complicated by McCain's earlier statement that he would consider the same thing.

The following day, he met with a group of Hispanics in Chicago. Aides who had kept word of the event secret were placed on the defensive within hours after one participant criticized some of McCain's comments.

On Thursday, the Arizona senator flew to Iowa, a likely battleground state in the fall, where he expressed sympathy with victims of severe flooding and pledged support for federal recovery aid. The event was overshadowed by President Bush's appearance elsewhere in the same state on the same day.

Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gnRdQ5fr0252VRubg8XXwHhiwAbwD91EJ2MG1

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News analysis stories that accurately portray the dreadful incoherence of the McCain campaign are long overdue.

More like this, please.

[calimary]

1. Yes, I hope to see more, especially since it's highly unlikely that we'll see a wholesale

change in behavior from mccain. Those mistakes and mis-steps and mishaps and misjudgments may just be part of the way he really does do business. The only change being that mccain is now doing all these things inside a very large fishbowl rather than under the cover of the Senate, where he's just one guy out of 100 and there's nothing particularly noteworthy about him there. The only difference is that everybody's paying attention to him because he's chosen to stick his neck WAY out above the fray and we're all watching more closely now (and some of us are paying more attention).

It's one thing if we have one or even maybe two incidents like these. But it's quite another to have a whole slew of 'em, a veritable - and ever lengthening - string of pearls. If he's got a track record of steady blunders like this, then it can fairly be asked if this is symptomatic, or symbolic, of the way he'd run a White House? We've already seen what happens when that happen.

And as we see more of this, we should, indeed, throw in the much-needed and reasonable questions about whether a mcsame presidency would also be equally mistake-prone? Is this a preview? Might we be in for at least four years of this kind of sloppiness, carelessness, and yes - INCOMPETENCE???

It's WELL worth asking. The case can certainly, and credibly, be made. And remember, if it were happening so consistently with Obama, the bad guys would be making HUGE hay out of this, and expressing (and trying to provoke) doubt. It's what we SHOULD be doing. I do not want a SECOND Oval Office occupant IN A ROW blowing it here and there several times every week.

[The River]

2. Mis-steps?

The whole campaign is on crutches.
All they can do is mis-step with the
whole F*&^%*ng Media trying to keep it from
crashing completely.

They will have their horse race media circus at all costs.

[bunkerbuster1]

3. The story gets a little nauseatingly pro-McCain at the end

I was pretty happy with the coverage until I hit this:

Republican President Gerald Ford's declaration in 1976, at the height of the Cold War, that there was "no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" was a memorable one.

Or more recently Democratic Sen. John Kerry's decision to go windsurfing in 2004, an event that Republicans turned into a metaphor for a politician who shifts with the wind.

That those two are somehow analogous speaks volumes about our retarded political discourse.

And then there's this gem, emphasis mine:

Obama himself spent days in the Democratic primary race trying to explain away remarks he made at a closed-door fundraiser that small-town Americans who were bitter over their economic plight turned to religion.

Republicans took notice of that one, and Obama can expect to hear more about that moment in the fall.

Arguably, McCain has yet to make that kind of gaffe despite enduring a candidacy of remarkable adversity in which he went from front-runner to the campaign cellar and back again.

Joking about bombing Iran only isn't "arguably" such a gaffe because our media have chosen to ignore it, among scores of truly disturbing remarks the man has made on record (the 50-dollar-an-hour lettuce picking job offer being probably the most egregious.)

[AddisonMiles]

4. We shouldn't get complacent

This campaign will take many twists and turns

[Carnea]

5. McCain hampered every time he opens his fucking mouth. NT