US:John McCain was more comfortable as an underdog, write Juliet Eilperinand Robert Barnesin Kansas City
REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE John McCain last week delivered one of his sharpest critiques yet of Barack Obama's Iraq policies, carefully reading a prepared speech that accused his Democratic rival of failing the commander-in-chief test and promoting ideas that would force American troops to "retreat under fire".
But just hours later he blurred his own message with an offhand comment to a television interviewer that Obama's proposal for a 16-month time frame for removing combat troops from Iraq might be a "pretty good timetable". That seemed to run counter to his attempts to cast Obama as naive on foreign policy, and it sent his aides scrambling.
As election day nears, McCain's campaign is adopting the aggressive, take-no-prisoners style of Karl Rove, the Republican operative who engineered victories for President Bush. The campaign continued the attack on Wednesday with a sarcastic television ad deriding Obama as a "celebrity", part of an intensifying effort to cast him as an elitist.
But the sharp-edged approach is being orchestrated for an unpredictable candidate who often chafes at delivering the campaign's message of the day. It is that free-wheeling style that has made him popular with voters and cemented his reputation for candour and straight talk.
McCain, who was most comfortable as an underdog in the unscripted environment of the New Hampshire primary, makes his advisers cringe as he delivers the attack line - and then keeps talking. In that respect, he is no Bush, his handlers say.
The result is a presidential campaign that sometimes rolls between serious policy discussions about the country's future and gotcha politics aimed at undermining his opponent's character.
For weeks, McCain's staff has been criticised for running a campaign that has no clear message. "It's the candidate," said one Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign, who added that efforts to identify a theme for each week quickly unravel as McCain veers off message in his public comments.
At a meeting in Pennsylvania last week, McCain stood before a banner that proclaimed "Energy Solutions" and "The Lexington Project" - the name his campaign coined for an energy proposal featuring a combination of conservation efforts, expanded offshore drilling, and nuclear power. McCain rambled quickly through the details and showed little appreciation for the art of "branding". "I call it the Lexington Project, my friends, but you can call it anything you want," he said.
Several weeks ago, senior aide Mark Salter said McCain would stop kicking off town hall meetings with news "ripped from the day's headlines" and would instead deliver a formal introduction on a single theme. That effort lasted just a few weeks.
The campaign's focus on expanding its war chest also sometimes compromises its ability to deliver a coherent message, since McCain's schedule is often dictated by the sites of fundraising events rather than an overarching theme. This week he has travelled from central California to San Francisco to Reno to Denver to Kansas City, holding as many fundraisers as public events. The assault on Obama's capacity to lead continued with the release of McCain's latest commercial, "Celeb", which compares Obama's ability to attract adoring fans to that of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. In a news conference, campaign manager Rick Davis said the ad draws a distinction between Obama's popularity and McCain's appeal, which Davis said stems not from "celebrity" but from "actually having a political movement based on ideas and solutions for the American public".
The new ad relies mainly on atmospherics, but it also delivers a harsh assessment of Obama's record, declaring that the Democrat "says he'll raise taxes on electricity". In fact, Obama opposes a "carbon tax", though he does favour a "cap and trade" plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions, which McCain also supports.
Obama's campaign responded to McCain's attacks Wednesday with an ad describing them as "the politics of the past".
On the stump in Missouri, Obama also said: "You know, I don't pay attention to John McCain's ads. Although I do notice that he doesn't seem to have anything to say very positive about himself. He seems to only be talking about me. You need to ask John McCain what he's for, not just what he's against." But sometimes McCain is not his best spokesman.
At a town hall meeting on Tuesday, a Republican voter posed a question McCain has heard everywhere: Why should Republicans support him? "I think I speak for a lot of conservatives when I say I'm not very excited about this election," the questioner said, noting that he differs with McCain on issues including "amnesty" for illegal immigrants and the senator's support for "the global warming crowd's agenda".
But rather than rattle off his most conservative positions - his opposition to abortion and support for the war - he launched into a long explanation of his role in a compromise on judges, something that conservatives often criticise him for. He sparked applause from the Republican audience by mentioning his support for conservative Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, but he then noted that he had backed liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer as well. McCain finished off what was supposed to be an explanation of why conservatives should back him with a pledge to push for a cleaner planet.
"I've stood up against my party many times because I've done what I thought was right," he said.