McCain's '08 Campaign is Broke and a Total Joke

Posted by Guest Blogger at 1:00 PM on July 13, 2007.

This post, written by Steve Benen, originally appeared on The Carpetbagger Report

What did we learn about John McCain's presidential campaign this week? Well, he's just about out of money. And his national campaign staff is just about gone. As is his Iowa campaign staff. More top aides are on their way out, and one of his top backers in Florida was arrested this week, charged with offering to perform oral sex for $20 on an undercover male police officer.

It's so bad that Jay Leno joked during his monologue this week, "John Edwards is on the campaign trail. He's now doing something called his 'Poverty Tour', where he's visiting people who have no money and no hope. His first stop today: John McCain's headquarters." (thanks to reader J.B. for the tip)

Given all of this, it's only natural that the lead item on ABC News' politics page right now leads with this headline: "Is McCain the Next Comeback Kid?"

The next what? Comeback? What comeback? The guy's campaign is in shambles, there's little hope for recovery, and ABC News is already suggesting that McCain might be the "Next Comeback Kid"?

Naturally, I clicked on the link to see what, exactly, was the basis for this bizarre idea. Here's what I found:

On the day that the original "Comeback Kid" makes his first campaign trip to New Hampshire on behalf of his wife, McCain is vying for his own comeback -- but this is a much different campaign than we've seen from him. ABC's John Berman reports that McCain flew commercial last night to New Hampshire and stayed at a Courtyard Marriott....

Per excerpts released by his campaign, McCain plans to get tough with the Iraqi government with a 1 pm ET speech in Concord: "The Iraqi government can function; the question is whether it will. If there is to be hope of a sustainable end to the violence that so plagues that country, Iraqi political leaders must seize this opportunity. It will not come around again."

In other words, McCain is giving a speech in New Hampshire about the war that will say what he's been saying. For that, ABC News' lead item suggests McCain might be ready for a "comeback."

I've seen candidates get media adulation, but this is embarrassing.

On a slightly more reasonable note, the Huffington Post's Tom Edsall suggests there is one option for McCain if he really wants to turn things around.

According to private conversations with political operatives from both parties, John McCain has no choice but to adopt a high risk strategy to revive his presidential bid, a double Hail Mary: Throw one stink bomb at the White House and another at Republican National Committee headquarters.

There is no guarantee the strategy would work - in fact the odds are long against it.

Edsall's not wrong; there might be an opening for a credible anti-Bush Republican in this field, and who knows, maybe McCain will give it a shot.

McCain tried to become the establishment candidate and failed. Fred Thompson is now seeking to fill that vacuum, although the value of that position appears to have dropped sharply. "The collapse of the McCain campaign is simply a metaphor for the disintegration of the entire Republican Party establishment," conservative public relations strategist Craig Shirley noted.

Rudy Giuliani has become the post-9/11 national security candidate. Mitt Romney, in turn, appears to have locked up Iowa, where a victory will turn him into a competitor elsewhere.

The only place left for McCain is to be the anti-Bush Republican. This was his turf in 2000, and it is far more fertile ground today.

But it's bound to fail because it's far too late. As Josh Marshall put it:

It strikes me more as an antic counterfactual on the lines of that classic Saturday Night Live sketch 'What if Spartacus had a piper cub'? What if John McCain hadn't flipflopped on pretty much everything he'd stood for from the very late 1990s through around 2003 instead of casting his lot with George W. Bush in an attempted political merger that makes AOL-TimeWarner look like a shrewd deal. [...]

[Y]ou can't undo the last three-plus years. Someone who is a master of the politics of opportunism can manage countless transformations. Not someone whose whole schtick is candor, authenticity and integrity. McCain is a good example of the fact that life can take almost everything away from you, and usually does. But your dignity you've got to give away. And he did.

Perhaps McCain can take some solace in knowing he'll always have the media's love -- because he won't get the voters' love.

Tagged as: bush, mccain, election08

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.