The McCain campaign implosion

We’re starting to hear more about the inevitable impending implosion of the McCain campaign. According to wikipedia, the media endorsements now stands at 127-46 in favor of Obama. What’s more interesting is the growing landslide of endorsements for Obama’s as compared to McCain’s. See for yourself. This is in contrast to years ago when the situation is the exact opposite. Here in the Wall Street Journal, we have the defections of Republicans to the Democratic ticket. On Karl Rove’s, the architect of the Bush presidency, site, see his electoral map. The blame game is already starting in the McCain camp, with finger-pointing, ass-covering and resignation starting to snowball. What’s worse, the McCain camp has to defend negativity generated by the press for the ridiculous amounts of money spent on Palin’s wardrobe and the mutilation hoax perpetrated by a McCain campaign worker. Then he is forced to blast Bush for the current situation without mentioning the fact that he supported Bush 90% of the time. That is all not good news in McCain-land. The implosion has begun and Obama’s campaign does not even need to lift a finger.  It will just snowball from now on to it’s foregone conclusion, an earthquake election.

What’s happening ? McCain could have been one up against Obama at any time in this campaign. Now why does Obama seem to be so impervious to any move made by McCain ? Obama’s black and that’s supposed to be a big advantage to McCain and still is. Obama is inexperienced, not very well known and an idealist which can be a double-edged sword. Every which way you dissect the 2 candidates, McCain will always start out the stronger party and Obama the weaker one. But in this case, Obama has managed to minimize his own weaknesses and maximize his opponent’s. It never cease to impress me that Obama’s team is disciplined, principled and steadfast irregardless of anything that’s thrown at them. Every move McCain makes end up backfiring. The lesson here is that the most important thing about winning is to put your own house in order first. It’s like a tree firmly anchored to the ground but adapting by swaying with the force of the wind. No matter which direction or how strong the wind blows, the tree is till standing. In my opinion, McCain has already lost from the beginning because :

1. His world view and value systems does not exactly align with the Republican’s more extreme positions. He is more centrist and moderate. This causes conflicts and infighting which is already happening.
2. There’s no central overarching moral theme of his campaign. It’s just throwing everything at the wall at any moment to see what sticks. They are too quick to abandon their main message with too much attacking and too little in solidifying their core theme.
3. He’s too much inside Washington that he’s just out of touch.

Obama’s camp is the exact opposite. In a fight, the loser always blames the opponent for being the stronger, faster, more skiIled, the weather, whatever. The perspective of the loser is never the fact that there’s something wrong with himself in the first place and needs to keep his own house in order above all else. The martial art taiji teaches us to first and foremost find our root, to be introspective, to know ourselves before we learn how to fight others. There is no firm root in McCain’s campaign. I am impressed with Obama’s campaign who seemed to have mastered this basic truth so obvious but yet so elusive to a war veteran like McCain.

McCain’s flawed strategy

It’s bound to happen at some time. Here McCain is forced to defend Obama. McCain’s campaign has been hijacked by the team that got Bush elected and now they are using the same flawed tactics. But this time round, it has not really worked well, why ? Because if you’re up against a strong, stable opponent, this doesn’t work. The foundations of Obama’s campaign is strong enough to withstand such attacks from the McCain camp. An election strategy is like a war strategy and McCain’s camp being the side that claims to be more capable militarily obviously doesn’t have much strategic common sense here (that’s why shit happens in Iraq). If Obama’s character is somewhat flawed, yes, you can win by focusing on his character and moral judgement. But Obama is a different politician. He’s smart and he first lays the ground rules by claiming the moral high ground of running a clean campaign and from the looks of it, he has a more disciplined team who tries to avoid wrestling in the mud. Because they know getting into the mud is not to their advantage and also that kind of politics does not benefit the country at all in the first place. Instead he has tried to build his campaign on solid ground.

Now because of this, McCain, who actually should be the frontrunner in this campaign by all counts, has run into a solid Obama defence against his team’s harassment and because of that has seen him slipping into the underdog status. McCain’s team has totally underestimated Obama and misjudged the circumstances of this election. Their seemingly directionless and random assaults against Obama has not worked but instead it shows the general lack of a strategy, vision and discipline by McCain’s team. McCain himself is a decent man and he should be aware that if the smear strategy against Obama doesn’t stick, it can backfire on him like in the video above. His message has also mostly won him the white, ignorant, evangelical, and sometimes extremist segments of the population. What he needs is actually more of the liberal, educated, moderate segments of the population to tip the votes in his favor and his current strategy is totally way off the mark. He is now forced to play on Obama’s ground rules and it’s probably a little too late.

As the art of war says, take the high ground and anchor there, then watch a less capable enemy falter by their own fruitless struggles.