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Oct

18

Analysis by AP eviscerates McCain campaign which “lurches” to survive


Read the entire piece here.  The quotes that support AP writer Beth Fouhy’s conclusions (so that she isn’t, you know, being conclusory), are sigh-inducing:

“When you run a campaign without a strategy and everything becomes tactical and your tactics don’t work, you respond by finding other tactics,” Republican consultant Ed Rollins said. “Unfortunately, that’s helped Barack paint the guy who is clearly better prepared to be commander in chief as erratic and not stable.”

“It’s the thrashing between the events you can’t control and what the proper message for the campaign should be,” [Republican pollster John] McLaughlin said. “In the past week, we’ve seen the McCain campaign thrashing.”

As for the lurching:

In an interview with a North Carolina television station this week, the Arizona senator said he didn’t know when he would return to the battleground state. “You know, my schedule lurches from day to day,” he said, an edge in his voice.

My cousin who is a PsyD wrote me the following a few weeks ago:

John McCain is  a “survivor” no different than a person who spent time in, and survived to tell the tale of one of the Nazi extermination camps. He faced misery, pain, and death each day.  Torture came directly and viscerally as well as indirectly in watching others suffer unspeakable and unthinkable inhumane acts and experiencing loss of friends and loved ones.

In order to survive you begin to live hour to hour, minute to minute, day to day.  You shorten your vision and put all your energy into self preservation.  When you leave the camp you take that with you.  It stays with you and reshapes how you perceive, process, and reason, react and act.  Your thoughts and responses. In some cases it governs the survivors life.  IN others you begin to reassimilate ands acclimate and can look like everyone else, however the damage runs deep and is done.  SUCH DAMAGE IS AGAIN MOST OBVIOUS WHEN STRESSED OR THREATENED.

Thus we have John McCain.  His tenacious and impulsive, gambler’s personality is probably nature.

However when under stress and feeling threatened his perspective shortens and narrows and he goes into survival mode, making unilateral decisions designed to get him to the next day.  What seems reckless and impulsive, and makes little sense to the rest of us, is survival instinct cultivated and solidified during his time at the Hanoi Hilton.  Such is fine for one man’s survival, but is dangerous when leading others.  Judgment based on survival without thought of ramifications and the big picture is dangerous.    SUCH IS John McCain.

I believe that analysis could not be more accurate and aligns exactly with what Fouhy wrote and her quotes support.  Likewise, all the endorsements coming in cite to the same behaviors.  My cousin just put a clinical analysis on it.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:12 am October 18th, 2008 in Barack Obama, Campaigning, leadership, Media, Politics, WH2008 

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