Steve Schmidt

Writing a post-mortem for John McCain’s presidential candidacy would be premature. But if and when that moment comes next week, toxic staff infection will be listed as a primary cause of death.

Rarely has any national campaign suffered from the combination of oafish incompetence and transparent malice displayed by the little coterie of operatives who surround the Republican nominee. They continue to damage his reputation and theirs, even as they attempt to escape blame for the campaign’s declining prospects.

Now these geniuses seem to think they can offload the responsibility for their mistakes onto Sarah Palin, which would be like Doctor Frankenstein trying to blame everything on the poor monster.  read more »

In Adam Nagourney’s piece today on the McCain campaign's how-we-can-still-win scenario, McCain strategist Steve Schmidt made the following assertion:

"The McCain campaign is roughly in the position where Vice President Gore was running against President Bush one week before the election of 2000."

False.

Here are the results of the 10 most recent independent national polls:

Obama, 52-39 (CBS/New York Times)

Obama 52-45 (Rasmussen)

Obama, 50-43 (Hotline)

Obama, 54-43 (ABC/Washington Post)

Obama, 49-46 (Battleground)

Obama, 51-41 (Zogby)

Obama, 52-42 (NBC/Wall Street Journal)

Obama, 51-45 (Gallup)

Obama, 49-40 (Fox)

Obama, 44.8-43.7 (IBD/TIPP)

That last poll, from IBD/TIPP, has been pushed exhaustively by the McCain-leaning pundits, but there's good reason to discount it. As FiveThirtyEight.com points out, the 1-point race that they found is the result of a dubious 74-22 percent advantage for McCain among 18-to-24-year-olds.  read more »

From John McCain's perspective, the dispiriting outcome of the last presidential debate was determined long before he and Barack Obama arrived on the Hofstra campus. It had been decided months before, in fact, largely by the ineptitude of the Republican campaign's strategists. Actually, as experienced figures in both parties now agree, "strategist" is probably too generous a term to describe the people managing McCain's campaign. (Lobbyist is generally a more accurate term for the top advisers but beside the point here.) Rick Davis, Steve Schmidt, and the rest of the McCain-Palin crew have consistently failed to move their campaign above the tactical level.  read more »

OXFORD, Miss.—It was hours before Friday night’s debate at the University of Mississippi on September 26 and rows of reporters in a hangar-size white press tent were typing the background and context graphs of their stories. Dozens of flat-screen televisions in front of them counted down the hours and seconds to the debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. University volunteers circulated, making sure each desk space had free Anheuser Busch notepads (“About one in seven Anheuser-Busch beers in the United States is expected to be brewed using renewable fuel by the end of 2009,” was printed behind the cover) and free red, white and blue Anheuser Busch pens.  read more »

Observer Beijing correspondent Tom Scocca, via IM, on what this might have looked like if Sarah Palin had stuck with sports TV:

tomscocca: COURIC: "Governor Palin, do the Jets have a chance in the AFC East?"

PALIN: "The Jets, well, in what respect? In respect to playing football? With the east? It's important to remember that they're in the American--the American Conference, and, um, not only that but in the East, and one thing I know is that in America, in the Americans, you can do anything if you stay with it, as I, as I see the Jets--you know, New York! It's a big city and a city that can make champions, in anything, let alone--you know, football, Katie.

 read more »

Since her selection as John McCain's running-mate was announced last Friday, the media has been "on a mission to destroy" Sarah Palin. That's the charge from McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt, at least, and it's just one of countless over-the-top characterizations from the McCain campaign and its surrogates of the scrutiny Palin has encountered.

On one level, this is standard fare for a Republican nominee. Ever since Richard Nixon framed his candidacy and his presidency as havens for a "silent majority" of Americans who felt condescended to by media elites, press-bashing has been a staple of the G.O.P. playbook, a way to rally the party base against a common enemy and to convince G.  read more »

This morning, The Politico ran an innocuous-seeming story in which a series of unnamed Republican consultants and strategists – with the exception of Ed Rollins, who went on the record – took turn taking shots at various aspects of the McCain campaign’s strategy.

The story didn’t seem particularly surprising, given (a) McCain’s underdog status in the presidential race, which automatically makes many Republicans uneasy; and (b) the general willingness of unnamed consultants and “strategists” to use the cloak of anonymity to tell the world how much better Campaign X would be if they were running the show.  read more »

After a disappointing first-quarter result, John McCain's fund-raising operation is getting an overhaul.

According to an official with the McCain campaign, there will now be a concerted effort to get more out of the many former Bush rangers and pioneers that the campaign has assembled.

"We'll have a more established bundling program," said the official, adding that the campaign would ask its major fund-raisers to be more "aggressive and accountable."

In other words, McCain wants bundlers to vie with each other -- a phenomenon that seems to occur rather naturally in Hillary's donor universe.

"There will be more competition between the fund-raisers," said the official. "We're focused on providing them the tools that can provide success, by placing goals in front of folks, meeting those goals, tracking how we are doing more closely. Establishing metrics and meeting those." Another campaign aide said that campaign co-chairs Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas and former congressman Tom Loeffler will become more involved with the finance side of the operation, working with McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt to boost fund-raising.

--Jason Horowitz

Mercury Public Affairs, the company that helped bring you three terms of George Pataki and is now working on John McCain's presidential campaign, just announced the hiring Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign manager Steve Schmidt.

Interestingly, the formal announcement from Mercury's managing partner Kieran Mahoney doesn't mention McCain at all.

From the statement:

"[Schmidt's] experience in the presidential campaign, the California governor's race and the Supreme Court confirmation process gives him an unmatched understanding of how polling, grassroots mobilization, issue advocacy, government relations and media relations work together to achieve measurable business results."

Full statement after the jump.  read more »

-- Azi Paybarah

Sheldon Silver gave the Atlantic Yards project the go-ahead.

Chris Owens, son of Major and a major foe of the Atlantic Yards, debuts his new blog, "Power from Truth." Coincidence?

John McCain hired another old Bush hand, Steve Schmidt. Schmidt also managed Arnold Schwarzenegger's reelection bid.

Hillary did "The View." Sorry, no YouTube yet.

Joe Lieberman quit Olympia Snowe's Senate Centrist Coalition, choosing to start his own bipartisan group with the considerably more conservative Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander. Josh Marshall is confused.

TNR's Conor Clarke says the story of Barack Obama's land deal really isn't about impropriety, or the appearance of impropriety, but rather the appearance of the appearance of impropriety. In other words, there's nothin' there.

Jacob Weisberg says that just because you have a problem with Mitt Romney's religion, it doesn't mean you're a bigot.

Azi's curious why he got this email Christmas card from former presidential candidate Mark Warner. Hasn't anyone told him he quit?

You don't say... Remaining abstinent before marriage is "extremely challenging," according to the Washington Post. (via TNR's The Plank.) -- Andrew Rice