Bill Kristol, the staff conservative on the New York Times' Op-Ed page finally atoned for his many editorial sins and called upon McCain to fire his campaign. Not just his staffers - his campaign, as in his misguided, erratic approach thus far.
Kristol's column for today (Monday, Oct 13), could have been written by the Obama campaign, only Kristol has written it better.
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Kristol concludes that McCain's campaign has been overmatched by Obama's in almost everyway and he offers the McCain campaign advice on how to reclaim its soul.
Here is the eye candy:
He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed.
And then there is this:
What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.
Kristol calls on McCain and Palin to drop the fear mongering, invite Obama/Biden to join them in joint appearances to restore civility and substance.
Kristol goes on in this vein, calling on McCain to drop the gimmicks and the bad ads and ends with a plea to McCain to offer a mea culpa at the Hofstra debate for all the bad stuff done by his campaign so far.
No I am not making this stuff up.
For quite a while Kristol has been a good example of how not to be a Op-Ed writer at an outlet like the New York Times. Today he did the right thing.
The question is whether McCain will listen to the counsel of the Republican establishment.