Shakeup at McCain HQ

According to various press sources, Republican Presidential nominee in waiting, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has shaken up his campaign.

The campaign manager, Rick Davis, will now be spending much of his time on fundraising, planning the convention and the vice presidential search. Unpaid advisor Steve Schmidt, who has been traveling with the senator, moves into a more day to day control position.

What is interesting to me is that Steve Schmidt ran the successful rebranding of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenngger in his re-election campaign as well as the "war room" for President Bush and Vice President Cheney in 2004. He is a details man who is said to be a stern taskmaster and a guy who can control all the various aspects of a presidential campaign.

Many press accounts indicate Republican Party frustration with the McCain campaign for what they said was the squandering of the time after the Arizonan won the nomination that could have been put to use "identifying" himself with the American public at large. That would have been difficult at any rate because most media types were reporting in overdrive on the Clinton-Obama race. Nevertheless, many Republicans feel that the campaign has been literally adrift. The last straw could have been a speech on June 3 in which Senator McCain appeared before a stark green backdrop and gave a speech before what has been called a "sparse" and "uninterested" crowd. The speech was generally panned.

Compared to the speech given by Senator Obama (it was the night he clinched the nomination and was at the Excel Center in Minnesota) who was speaking before a roaring crowd in a packed house, the McCain effort was found wanting. Again, the man and the moment reverted to Obama and while his speech ran long that night, all networks covered it almost in its entirety while ignoring, for the most part, Senator McCain.

At any rate, such things as appearances matter and Republicans hope Steve Schmidt can fine-tune the operation.

Given the challenges facing Senator McCain and the Republicans in this election, he needs to run a near-flawless campaign.

Polls still show it's close so the good news for Senator McCain is that Senator Obama does not have a big lead at this point. But in this day and age of visual, visual, visual, the McCain campaign has to show it can compete with that of Obama's on a variety of levels. Given the way the Obama campaign has performed, that won't be easy.

Something else to keep in mind is that Mr. Schmidt's sucess with Gov. Schwarzenngger involved a candidate who came into office as a conservative firebrand and morphed into a moderate Republican who embraced global warming and other social policies. This may be what he needed to do in liberal California, but it could also serve as a hint that the McCain camp thinks it needs to appeal more to independents and moderates who may be uncomfortable with the increasingly difficult to understand and ever-evolving positions of Senator Obama.

The McCain camp has its work cut out for it, but this election is far from over, at least in current polling.