"Don't try to understand 'em; just rope, throw, and brand 'em"
John McCain is not a Maverick. A maverick is untamed - unbranded - indomitable. John McCain is none of those things. John McCain is being treated like a child by the people in charge of his campaign. John McCain is not allowed to make important decisions. John McCain is not even allowed to speak for the campaign. A maverick is untamed - unbranded - indomitable. John McCain is not a Maverick. John McCain is a gelding.
It started in April, when John McCain was ignored by the North Carolina Republican Party when he asked them to remove an inappropriate ad.
Asked if the state party's unwillingness to heed his call raised questions about his leadership, McCain replied: "I don't know exactly how to respond to that."
John McCain's campaign has revoked his cell phone privileges for fear that he will simply parrot the last thing said to him. No really.
aides, concerned about his tendency to adopt the last opinion he has heard, have tried to cut back on the time he has to make calls.
John McCain is not allowed to hang out with reporters anymore. During his two runs for the Republican nomination, he stayed really close with all the reporters covering him. This is a press strategy that he has credited for his success with the media. The people who run his campaign have denied him permission to continue the practice. From the same article as the link above:
Mr. Schmidt has sought to cut down on Mr. McCain’s use of his cellphone and limit the people who have regular access to Mr. McCain in an effort to keep him more focused, advisers said. He has been the impetus for an effort by Mr. McCain to limit sharply his engagements with reporters, the kind of freewheeling encounters that Mr. McCain enjoys — and that helped him charm the news media for years — but that often lead him to veer from his campaign’s message of the day.
John McCain is not allowed to make the big decisions. It's been reported that he wanted to pick Joe Lieberman as his running mate but was overruled.
For weeks, advisers close to the campaign said, Mr. McCain had wanted to name as his running mate his good friend Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrat turned independent. But by the end of last weekend, the outrage from Christian conservatives over the possibility that Mr. McCain would fill out the Republican ticket with Mr. Lieberman, a supporter of abortion rights, had become too intense to be ignored.
John McCain is not permitted to decide which of his statements represent the positions of the McCain campaign. On at least three separate occasions, campaign staff have rejected his statements or denied that he speaks for the campaign.
"He has certainly I’m sure said things in town halls" that don’t jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn’t mean it’s official.
Is it any wonder that John McCain's fellow longtime Washington insiders - people who have known him for decades - think he is no longer in control of his campign?
"I think he's inside a bubble and is not aware . . ." - Andrea Mitchell
"I know he says I'm John McCain, I paid for it but they have that in the can and they do it. I don't think he knew about it. I really don't." - James Carville
The defense of John McCain is that he is so out of the loop about what goes on in his campaign, that he allows the same people who smeared him so viciously in 2000 to attach his name to messages he hasn't seen and doesn't know about.
John McCain is not a maverick - He's a gelding.
He is a sad, pathetic little man who has been well and truly branded.
John McCain - who would be president if he won?