Sunday, July 13, 2008

The Chris Matthews Show: Do McCain’s Campaign Shake Ups Equate To A Shaky Presidency?

Nicole Belle, Crooks and Liars: John McCain’s campaign is struggling, and this was a particularly hard week for them. But never fear, McCain’s Media is here to spin this as well as possible for the MaverickMan. After all, there’s no need for them to go over and over ad nauseam all of McCain’s verbal gaffes from this week. They did that during the Democratic primary when they talked about Clinton’s Bosnia story and Obama’s relationship with Rev. Wright for weeks on end. It’s so done. Let’s instead focus on him bringing in new staff. But don’t look too hard at the fact that he’s brought in the people from Karl Rove’s shop that destroyed his candidacy in 2000, because that might indicate some sort of desperation for the dirty politics that Rove is so famous for using. So let’s invent a more mild concern, like a messy desk analogy for his management style. And we all know that can be turned around to be a positive, since Nixon had a neat desk. But above all, let’s ask if this is a fair question to evaluate a supposed McCain presidency. (Click the pic for the vid.)
MATTHEWS: NY Times reporter Adam Nagourney wrote this week that quote even former McCain associates think voters now might be getting an early glimpse of the messy, unstructured way in which McCain and his White House might be managed. Howard, is this a fair problem for people to be worried about, staff shakeups, firing people, layering people, bringing in new bosses to run the campaign?
FINEMAN: Well, John McCain is not a systems thinker. He’s a leader by personal will and force of personality. He’s gathered a sort of constellation of people around him. Nobody ever actually leaves the orbit, it’s just different planets fly closer at different times.
MATTHEWS: Well, who are these former staffers that keep dumping on him in the NY Times?
FINEMAN: There are a couple who have escaped…who had escaped gravitational pull.
McCain Media, hard at work to make you not think at all.

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