The McCain campaign this year desperately needs a message and a narrative that is both appropriate for the candidate and for the times.

I found this unintentionally hilarious. Um, Bill, you mean to say that McCain doesn’t really have a message or a narrative? So you’re saying that he really doesn’t have a compelling reason why he should be president – yet?

It’s July.

Beautiful.

McCain is frustrated. He thinks he can beat Obama (politicians are pretty confident in their own abilities). But he isn’t convinced his campaign can beat Obama’s campaign. He knows that his three-month general election head start was largely frittered away. He understands that his campaign has failed to develop an overarching message. Above all, McCain is painfully aware that he is being diminished by his own campaign.

So, the War Hero is some sort of helpless bystander in his own campaign? He just stands there biting his lip and twisting his hankie while the campaign is frittering, failing and diminishing? Just the kind of take-charge Commander-in-Chief America needs in these troubled times!

Funny the MSM is desperately selling McCain neck and neck with the untried fading ”child” from Chicago. But McCain is telling the ”Luisitania”, surrounded by U-Boats, listing ten degrees, dead in the water. How can both narratives be true? Would my trusted news provider sell me a can of chickenshit labeled albacore?

Wrong analogy.

More like: the plane has one engine on fire, the other sputtering. Control authority weak, and he’s barely keeping out of a flat spin. The ground is coming up fast. The pilot would love to blame it on an enemy SAM, but the truth is that he skimped on the pre-flight.

The ejector handle just broke off.

Other than that, everything is looking great! Want some BBQ?

DemFromCT’s shorter William Kristol –

McCain knows McCain’s campaign sucks. But Mike Murphy will save him. Of course, everyone else in the McCain campaign and the GOP establishment will hate that, since Murphy is the maverick’s maverick. But things will work out. Now, I have a bridge to Brooklyn I just bought last week for sale, cheap.

Tbogg, your’s much better — selling shit as shinola is the essence of Brand GOP, no?

You should be more tolerant of the poor soul. He really isn’t responsible. He’s just another victim of a horrible disorder. Read all about it.
http://www.tagg-lines.com/2008/07/uh-oh.html

McCain has been a major figure in American public life for quite a while. And yet his campaign has made him seem somehow smaller. Obama is a first-term senator with no legislative achievements to speak of. His campaign has helped him seem bigger, more presidential.

Kristol repeated this observation on Fox, one more indication that McCain’s MSM “base,” in response his pathetic campaign, is eventually going to turn on him.

By October the election will look like a scene out of “The Old Man And The Sea” — with Mike Murphy playing the Old Man, and McCain playing the fish.

“McCain has been a major figure in American public life for quite a while. And yet his campaign has made him seem somehow smaller.”

In other words, the more people get to know Krusty, the less they like him.

Fascinating how the MSM is hellbent on perpetuating the idea of the close race between two candidates who just have slighty different views on things.

Over the weekend NPR ran a ridiculous piece on the candidate’s attempts at reaching the hispanic voters; they gave some spokesman for evangelical latino churches endless airtime to point out how Obama couldn’t quite do this or that, while McCain had once said something nice about a guy from Mexico. It achieved the intended effect: muddy the waters, make McCain appear moderate and Obama appear to have random shortcomings (“he’s not old enough”… “his smile is way too sincere…” “he doesn’t have a policy plan for dealing with the Boldurian secessionists…”). Meanwhile, apparently, Krusty McCain just has to tweak his image as a senile old fart with a bad temper and an addiction to rich women, and he’ll be a shoe-in for the job. Riiight.

I heard it. As a companion item find the transcript of the interview with the NYT steno that wrote the fluff piece on Fats Limbaugh. Talk about a fierce bitch protecting his pet pig.
As to NPR there is something going on there that Krusty likes and Obama prolly doesn’t.

If Bloody Bill wants him, then by all means get Murphy on board as fast as you can. Given Bloody Bill’s track record, Murphy will implode and the Old Guy will withdraw before the convention.