McCain Campaign’s Crashers

New York Times Magazine reveals the behind-the-scene tales of “The Making (and Remaking) of McCain.” The articles is filled with details on the tactics McCain’s advisors had used to run the negative tone as well as the picking of Sarah Palin. New York Times has done us all a favor by putting the last nail in the McCain campaign’s coffin. The story is highly recommended:

John McCain’s biography has been the stuff of legend for nearly a decade. And yet Schmidt and his fellow strategists have had difficulty explaining how America will be better off for electing (as opposed to simply admiring) a stubborn patriot. In seeking to do so, the McCain campaign has changed its narrative over and over. Sometimes with McCain’s initial resistance but always with his eventual approval, Schmidt has proffered a candidate who is variously a fighter, a conciliator, an experienced leader and a shake-’em-up rebel. “The trick is that all of these are McCain,” Matt McDonald, a senior adviser, told me. But in constantly alternating among story lines in order to respond to changing events and to gain traction with voters, the “true character” of a once-crisply-defined political figure has become increasingly murky.