The Candidate and the Campaign

Running for president is a massive undertaking. There is no doubt in my mind that the primary reason third party and independent candidates face such an uphill battle has much less to do with ideology than with logistics. Lesser known candidates have less resources with which to build their political organizations and few seem able to achieve success without big organizations even in the Internet age. A good political organization is so vital for a successful campaign that at times it is difficult to see where the campaign and the candidate begin and end. The "little people" who are largely responsible for the everyday running of a presidential campaign rarely achieve notice as individuals; instead, their actions, both good and bad, seem to be often and sometimes absurdly attributed to the candidate they work for.

One of the major political stories of the moment is the recent shakeup of the McCain campaign. Most of the articles I've read on this topic have painted a bleak picture of McCain's presidential chances. Seemingly, the failure of the McCain organization to manage finances and put McCain in a winning position have been directly attributed to McCain himself. I tend to look at things differently. John McCain is a senator as well as a presidential candidate. He's a busy guy. He can't micromanage his campaign. Therefore, he relied on an organization to take care of certain things. He perhaps made bad choices in choosing this organization or perhaps the men and women in that organization simply underperformed. Realizing this, McCain has decided to set about cleaning up the organization. There are some departures. McCain's new organization can, perhaps, achieve better political outcomes such as higher poll numbers and more contributions. I tend to respect McCain more for realizing his campaign is not working and intervening to fix it; that's pretty presidential, albeit highly motivated by self-interest! Obviously, this isn't the script a candidate wants a campaign to follow, but I think McCain is being buried prematurely merely for acting responsibly. Obviously, the very best president possible would always select the right people to work for him and would keep a keen eye on all official affairs, regardless of his huge number of responsibilities, to make sure all is going well; however, the next best president would be able to recognize mistakes he has made and fix them when he sees them. I think McCain can still be the next best kind of president, and I'm not sure any of his competition can be any better than that.

While the mismanagement of McCain's campaign does raise legitimate questions regarding McCain's leadership ability and diligence, sometimes candidates take heat for actions of their campaign that seem to have very little to do with them. Exhibit A: Barack Obama staffer writes a memo which refers to Hillary Clinton as a representative of the Punjab rather than of New York. The insinuation stings, to be sure; does a pro-trade stance imply a betrayal of one's own country? However, at the end of the day, the insinuation came from a memo written by a staffer who is not named Barack Obama! When Obama starts calling Hillary Clinton a traitor in the debates this is an issue to be concerned about, but until that happens I think campaign workers need to be viewed as the individuals as they are rather than parts of Greater Obama. Exhibit B: Sam Brownback staffer passes on an email critical of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, aka the church Mitt Romney belongs to. Like Obama, Brownback found it necessary to make a public apology for something he did not do. Of course, if apologies were not issued I would assume the candidates DID agree with their staffers, so I think both candidates did the right thing by apologizing. The really unfortunate aspect of both cases, though, is that staffers are in a position to hurt the candidates they work for because of their own individual beliefs and preferences. Even if Obama and Brownback's staffers did actually speak with their master's voice so to speak, we have no way of knowing this with any confidence save through listening to Obama and Brownback's own words and observing their actions.