An Info Ink Commentary.

The Fat Lady has sung.  The last vote counted.  Well crap!  The maverick must return to the drudgery of the Senate, McCain has lost.

McCain above all was a maverick–at least that is how the saga was playing–but was he?  Or was it a carefully orchestrated life?

He ran on a shoe string budget during the primaries–so how did he beat the monied boys?  Mitt was a Mormon–and that while no one will admit it played into his defeat.  Giuliani was a hollow shell with nothing but 9/11 to offer the voter and that did not play well in 2008.  Most of the others were one issue candidates–not good.

So as the race went on McCain became the logical choice.  He was an American hero–at least in the tag lines.  His military service played well with vets and his age played well in Florida.

He, McCain, became the logical nominee, so how did he lose the election?  The best answer is tactics.  He and his campaign were full of tactics, but they were devoid of any measurable strategy.  No depth, no game plan, they thought that the “hero” label would usher him into the White House.  They were sadly wrong.  He never had a substantial message other than war hero and national security.  He and his campaign flailed around trying to find a hook for the people , but sadly they had none.

The tactic was to hit Obama on his experience, they peed on that tactic when they picked Palin.  They then tried the celebrity attack and Palin crapped on that also.  The original tactic was to hit Obama on the national security thing and then the economy went in the toilet.  Unfortunately, McCain had no idea how the handle the economy and he struggled for 2 months before the election to find a hook that would work with the voter.  He failed.

Then the dumbest tactic was tried, attack Obama as a socialist, Marxist and his “redistribution of wealth” statement.  That was not so good either, because only old farts even knew what socialism was, at least the term, maybe not the definition.

And then along came Joe, the plumber that is.  The campaign tried, in vain, to turn this poor guy into a symbol of the struggling middle class.  The sad part was that it was shown that Joe would pay less taxes under the Obama plan.

The campaign kept throwing negative attacks at Obama trying to get him to respond and he would not.  Made him appear to have the moral high ground.  Obama stayed on his message of how tpo save the economy and McCain spent all his time telling voters how bad Obama was, but never offered a comprehensive plan of his own.  McCain appeared to be confused and out of touch at the start of the economic crisis and it continued until the last day of the campaign.

IMO, McCain was NEVER ready to be the nominee.  Yes, he would become the loveable underdog, but not ready for the party nomination.  He had a couple of really good speeches, but after that he and his once popular VP feel flat on their butts.  Neither one could make a case for them to run the country.  His BS strategy did not work on the voters and then he once again became the bitter old man.

McCain in the closing days of the election has told people they need to look at history, maybe he should have not said that because there are several like things in his candidacy as to that of McGovern.  And unfortunately, McGovern was a loser too.  In 1972 McGovern was the party reformer, just as McCain has been labeled that and we know how disastrous that label can be in the election.  McGovern’s VP candidate was not all that he was cracked up to be, sound familiar?  Will McCain’s campaign synonymous with lost causes just as McGovern’s did?

Just as he had NO strategy in the primaries; he had none in the election.  He may even go down in history as one of the worse presidential candidates to ever run of the office.

He was NEVER ready to be a presidential candidate.