Oh woe is Billy......just this week he devoted an entire column to touting the skills of McCain's 2000 Campaign Advisor Mike Murphy and telling everyone that he was hearing strong rumors that Mike was just about to take on the leadership of the foundering 2008 effort. Didn't take very long for that soap bubble to burst did it?
And if you want a picture of just what Billy is worried about, AdNags at the NYT has a wonderful panoramic view of the inflighting scenario now in place.
Better yet, his story notes, is the kind of image it is creating about what a White House team would look like if McCain were "in charge" (and I use that term loosely since being "in charge" is something McCain apparently finds as challenging as reading off a teleprompter.)
But hardly had the electrons dried on the Nagourney piece than he pops up with the latest news...Murphy ain't gonna be part of the team.
This is my favorite segment of Nagourney's piece on the conflicting staff personalities and battles:
All of this intrigue breeds discouragement among even those former McCain associates who do not dispute the notion that voters now might be getting an early glimpse of the messy, unstructured way in which a McCain White House might be managed. They are hard-pressed to explain why Mr. McCain tolerates this — or encourages this — or why he has trouble cutting ties with people who have not served him well over the years.
“I can’t answer the why,” said John Weaver, who was one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers before being forced out in a shake-up last year. “It is just that way and for his own sake, he needs to finally, firmly decide where he wants to take this campaign.”
A couple of other notes here:
1- This certainly offers a contrast with the Obama campaign, which from the get go, has managed to avoid the kinds of internal battles which can be common in big political campaigns like this. As one story has it, Obama early on went to Silicon Valley on a fund-raising trip to meet with venture capitalists. One of them asked why they should fund a candidate like him. He replied...."Watch the way I run my campaign. It's the way I will run the country." Interestingly, his support from this industry segment and others has been pretty darn strong.
2- All of this conflict within the McCain camp also raises another important point which should be pushed constantly as a meme between now and November. "McCain stands there and tells you all the things he is going to do if elected like cut taxes, end the war in four year to generate big budget savings, reform Social Security, come up with a health plan and deal with global warming. But it seems absolutely certain that he would wind up as a Republican President, pushing policies which have already proven to be unworkable and doing so with a very heavily Democratic Congress. Why cast your vote for someone who has zero chance of ever getting any of his tired ideas past a Congress far more united against those ideas?"