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Rogues'
Gallery: McCain
Campaign Team -- or Faces Behind The Fiasco
Snakes on a plane:
Steve Schmiidt, Mark Salter, speechwriter; and Brooke Buchanan,
press secretary
Meet the entire John
McCain campaign team, the brains behind the fiasco, the
initiator of the Straight Talk Express, Karl Rove veterans, and
folks angling for a fancy White House job
[GO
TO Sarah Palin's $150,000 makeover, $22,800 on make-up]
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CAMPAIGN DIRECTOR
Steve Schmidt is one of the toughest of Washington's professional campaigners. Schooled by Karl Rove,
the brain behind President George W. Bush's two electoral
victories and Arnold
Schwarzenegger's successful gubernatorial reelection campaign in
California. He is in charge of the day to day running of
McCain's campaign and is responsible for imposing
discipline on the senator's often shambolic leadership style. Schmidt sanctioned the negative ads, backed by strong
comments to the press focusing on Mr Obama's personality.
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| Rick Davis, lobbyist, is the chief executive officer
of John McCain's presidential campaign. A veteran of the Reagan
administration, Davis ran McCain's presidential bid eight years
ago. He also founded a lobbying firm -- Davis, Manafort Inc. --
which has made at least $2.8 million lobbying Congress since
1998. |
Rick
Davis, veteran Washington insider and lobbyist
[Ugly
scenes inside McCain-Palin campaign: Palin's tantrums]
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SPEECHES Mark Salter is a
speechwriter who has worked with John McCain for 18 years. He
has collaborated with McCain on the senator's biographical
books.
FOREIGN POLICY
Randy Scheunemann. This is
the second time as foreign policy coordinator for a McCain
presidential campaign, first doing the job in 2000. Founder in
2001 of Washington consulting firm Orion Strategies.
Robert Kagan, a scholar at
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, served in the
State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the Policy
Planning Staff.
Stephen E. Biegun, vice
president of international governmental affairs for Ford Motor
Company.
Richard S. Williamson was
most recently named U.S. special envoy to Sudan in January 2008.
Williamson has a long background in UN diplomacy.
Peter W. Rodman is senior
fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has served as a senior
foreign policy official in five Republican administrations.
McCain also seeks advice from Henry
Kissinger, Richard Armitage, and William Kristol. Sarah Palin is
said to have no valuable input in discussions (read
Sarah Palin's rise to power.
John McCain consults with his
campaign team
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ECONOMY Douglas Holtz-Eakin has been
long active in public policy, serving as chief economist for the
president's Council of Economic Advisers and director of the
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). He claimed that
McCain was partly responsible for inventing the BlackBerry.
Douglas
Holtz-Eakin
Kenneth Rogoff
is a Harvard economist and research associate at the National
Bureau of Economic Research.
John B. Taylor
is a Stanford economist known for devising the Taylor Rule, a
guideline for monetary policymakers on how to set short-term
interest rates as economic conditions change.
John McCain has put together a team of Karl Rove attack dogs.
It hasn't helped.
ENERGY
R. James Woolsey was CIA
director from 1993 to 1995. Woolsey was a strong proponent of
toppling Saddam Hussein, believing him to be a major threat to
the United States.
Eric Burgeson heads the
energy portfolio at Barbour Griffith and Rogers (BGR), a lobby
firm in Washington, DC, that he joined in 2006. Burgeson says
McCain plans to implement a cap-and-trade program to encourage a
market-based approach to protect the economy and environment.
 
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| Nicolle
Wallace was a political analyst for the CBS Evening News
until May 2008 before joining the McCain campaign as
spokesperson.
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Tracey Schmitt, spokesperson and press
secretary for Sarah Palin, held her hand to SNL gig. Defended
Palin's use of $150,000 of party money on fashion items:
"With all of the important issues facing the country right
now, it's remarkable that we're spending time talking about
pantsuits and blouses."
Amy Strozzi: Palin's make-up artist
received $22,800 for two weeks work in October, making her the
highest paid McCain operative during that period.
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McCain's
Communications Team
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Brooke Buchanan, press secretary to
John McCain, a survivor of past battles, known as "Brookey"
to McCain. |
Maria
Comella, spokesperson for McCain assigned to Palin. Has been
busy defending Palin's $150,000 fashion spending spree: "The
campaign does not comment on strategic decisions regarding how
financial resources available to the campaign are spent."
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Nancy
Pfotenhauer, senior policy adviser for McCain
responsible for dividing Virgina into real and unreal:
"I certainly agree that Northern Virginia has gone
more Democratic ... But the rest of the state -- real
Virginia if you will -- I think will be very responsive
to Senator McCain's message." |
Tucker Eskew, Palin handler and
advisor. accompanied her to SNL, wrote her acceptance speech to
the RNC. One of the Bush team, along with Warren Tompkins and
Neal Rhodes, whose smear tactics in South Carolina left a deep
scar on McCain and his wife Cindy. Told Palin he would
"flush the toilet" on his past, telling all.
Trevor Potter,
the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign.
 
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Phil
Gramm was co-chair of McCain's
presidential campaign
and his most senior economic adviser until July 2008.
In an interview on McCain's economic plans, Gramm
explained the nation was not in a recession, stating,
"You've heard of mental recession; this is a mental
recession." He added, "We have sort of become a nation
of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining
about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline." He
resigned from the campaign shortly afterwards. Mark
McKinnon resigned from the McCain campaign when Obama won
the Democrat's nomination. He did not want to be part of attacks
of Obama. 
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More
McCAIN ADVISORS past and
present MIKE
MURPHY media
consultant, founder of lobbying firm DC Navigators,
has been in McCain’s camp since 2000. Offered blunt
advice to McCain until benched by Steve Schmidt, whom he
dislikes intensely. McCain has since cut off all communication
with Murphy, the chief strategist of McCain's '00 campaign and a
longtime friend and adviser 
Happier
days, 2000: Rick Davis (left), McCain, Mike Murphy John
Weaver was one of McCain's closest advisers and brain behind
the 'Straight Talk Express'. He left the McCain campaign, along
with Terry A. Nelson, political director Rob Jesmer, and deputy
campaign manager Reed Galen, in July 2007 after months of poor
fundraising. Terry
A, Nelson was hired in 2006 as a "senior adviser".
Left in 2007. Charles
Fried, professor at Harvard Law School and important
conservative thinker, . Solicitor General of the United States
under President Reagan has abandoned the McCain-Team because of
Sarah Palin. He voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot.
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Vicki
Iseman, lobbyist, close friend of McCain's, thought the nature of
the relationship is unclear. Rumors of
romance ended their official connection. She attended fund-raisers,
visited his offices and accompanied him on a client's
corporate jet. |
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Marine Lieutenant Colonel
Orson Swindle. POW with McCain in Vietnam. Swindle is on the
board of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW). A maverick, he was
executive director of "United We Stand, America", and
spokesman for Ross Perot's 1992 presidential campaign.
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John McCain's Scream
Team
Karl Rove pupils and Washington
lobbyists make up McCain's ragtag campaign team
[GO
TO: Inside the McCain Campaign: Palin's Tantrums]
| Back in the beginning of
the presidential election campaign, John McCain was confident he
could beat Barack Obama.
As McCain and his staffers saw it, Obama was nothing but strong |
John
McCain's campaign is stumbling badly |
negatives: inexperienced;
no military service; foreign father; dubious associations such
as Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers; (untrue) rumors of an islamic
upbringing; plus -- though no one dared say it -- there was Obama's
race.
Defeating Obama was going to be a stroll in the
park. McCain would tout his military experience, his five years
as a POW, and his long senate record as a maverick and
across-the-aisle operator. Obama would be bashed, as Kerry was,
on flip-flopping, inconsistency, lack of leadership qualities,
and his liberal voting record.
Who's a
Naughty Monkey, Sarah? Gov. Palin's $150,000 of GOP money spent on
clothes for herself and family is hurting the McCain bid. |
But Obama is no Kerry.
He's run a smarter campaign than Kerry and McCain combined. He's
successfully risen above the fray, avoided personal attacks, and
met criticisms head on.
Also, 2008 is not 2004. The nation is tired of war and the
electorate is no longer belligerent. Whereas it tolerated, even
liked, Rovian-style negative campaigning in 2004, the public is
now sick and tired of attacks on a candidate's |
character. The economy is in a mess and voters
want to know how the candidates intend to fix it.
McCain has not inspired confidence. In the early
days, his campaign bumbled along in fits and starts, unable to
generate money or enthusiasm. McCain's erratic behavior and
disorganization was played out in full public view.
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Dan Gerstein,
Forbes writes: "As
John McCain's presidential campaign has unraveled this fall,
it's come to be defined and destabilized by a series of big,
backfiring gambles.
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His
fortunes improved when he appointed Steve "bulldog"
Schmidt, a Karl Rove protege, as his campaign mastermind. The skinheaded
Schmidt is about as subtle and nuanced as a bull on crack. |
He has only
one mode of operation: attack. If your opponent is weak, smash his
weaknesses. If he's strong on issues, attack harder, throwing as much
crap as you can at him, hoping some of it will stick.
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Dan Gerstein,
Forbes writes: "McCain's bailout bill gambit blew up the negotiations in
Washington. And last week, Team Maverick's loaded character
attacks against Barack Obama blew up in a bipartisan backlash...
Of all those bad tactical bets, though, none has been less
appreciated or more disastrous than McCain's post-primary
decision to entrust his campaign to a handful of Bush
operatives."
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Obama,
after months and months of tough and bitter campaigning against
Hillary Clinton, knows how to play this game. He has deflected
every McCain blow, making the old Arizona senator look like a
bad-tempered has-been, no longer able to play a good game.
McCain has behaved like a headless
chicken, with no discernible strategy. |
One week it's attack Obama for his
connection to Bill Ayers, then when that doesn't work, it's quick and
insincere apologies and the launching of a new and hastily pieced
together initiative. McCain seems willing to campaign on
whatever's in his head at the moment. If he gets a bright idea about
buying up mortgages at taxpayers' expense, he'll announce the idea
without first hearing what his own party thinks.
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Dan Gerstein,
Forbes writes: "The
war hero [McCain] thought he could win a character contest by lying,
cheating and generally stealing from the political playbook of
the most reviled president of the last century [George W. Bush].
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Those
times McCain has attempted to look presidential, such as when he
suspended his campaign to focus on the Wall Street crisis, he looked plain
silly. Did anyone seriously think the future of the country and
economy rested on |
the
behavior of one campaigning politician?
McCain has of
course been hit hard by president Bush's unpopularity. It's difficult to
think of a more disrespected president than George W. Bush.
And then, the
final nail in the coffin was the mad maverick choice of Sarah Palin as
his running mate. The woman wasn't vetted properly; no one took time to
find out whether she could construct a sentence, had ever read a book,
or could offer voters anything other than meaningless platitudes.
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Dan
Gerstein, Forbes writes: "[Steve
Schmidt and team] ended up swiftly swift-boating their own guy
and the peerless reputation he spent a quarter of a century
building, decimating in the process the campaign's best asset --
McCain himself. Talk about an honor killing.
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As
more information is revealed about Sarah Palin, which involves
little more than letting us see into her empty head, support for the
Alaska governor has plummeted. Even diehard conservatives such as
Christopher Buckley of the Nationa Review are jumping ship. |
Palin is
revealing herself to be a shallow and power-hungry woman, willing to
utter any foul lie in order to win support. Her credibility is
rock-bottom after revelations that she has spent $150,000 of the
Republican Party's money buying clothes for herself and her family.
That's more than most hockey moms spend on clothes in a lifetime.
If and when
John McCain loses the election, it will be entirely his fault -- and it
will be time to chuck Steve Schmidt-style of negative campaigning into
the dustbin of history.
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Weeks after Katie Couric's
devastating encounter with Sarah Palin, the interview
continues to be an internet hit. It is the most searched for
item on this site, so we'll keep the transcript in place for as
long as it's needed.
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