At Harvard's Institute of Politics tonight, David Plouffe,
David Axelrod, the winners, and Rick Davis and Bill McInturff, not the winners,
met on somewhat neutral territory to exchange
war stories and engage in a series of fascinating counterfactuals meant to help
the Kennedy School of Government draft a bit of story.
For example: Plouffe acknowledged that if Florida had kept its delegates and its January date on the Democratic nomination calendar, Obama might not have won the nomination. "Florida was concerning to us. If that Florida primary, coming three days after South Carolina, it might have mitigated all of South Carolina, and, in fact, we might not be the nominee."
Moderator Gwen Ifill elicited two distinct narratives from the campaigns. Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, drew up a picture of a nightmare political environment for Republicans, cemented by McCain's links to President Bush on Iraq policy.
"There is no question that the war on Iraq...continued to plague us as a party. That was our connection to the Bush administration. It was the easiest connection to make, and also the most intense one."
Here David Axelrod interrupts. "I have no doubt that ...the war was a complicated issue, but by the time people voted, it wasn't the issue that I think was driving their vote. I think the economy was driving their vote, and I would argue that the biggest Faustian bargain McCain made was switching his position on the tax cuts."
McInturff, McCain's pollster, told a story.: "The point was, we do the surge, John's been for it from like, 2004,45 and 6, we are the leading critic of the Bush administration, and then we get to January of '07, and then, guess what, the Bush administration ...adopts the surge, we go on TV in January on Meet the Press, and I said 'we have to say, over and over and over again, here's where I've been for years, and the president's behind me... and John was very, very tempered in a way that really affected our numbers with the base."
So McInturff called up Mark Salter, McCain's chief of staff at the time, and asked why McCain hadn't put distance between himself and President Bush. "He said, Bill, we're negotiating with the White House how many troops. We cannot be on air beign that distant from the president on the same weekend that we're negotiating over the number of troops...."
"What really happened," McInturff said, "was that John McCain really became President Bush's spokesperson on Iraq."
Axelrod and Plouffe credited McCain's faltering response to the economic collapse in September as being the single most decisive event of the fall campaign. In June, Plouffe said, Obama's internal polling did not pick up evidence that voters viewed McCain as out of touch. When, on September 15, McCain allowed that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" - Davis said this was evidence of McCain's optimism - voters began to see McCain as oblivious with Bush on economic policy but also as fundamentally out of touch with their concerns. The nine days following the McCain were devastating: McCain had a message problem, he fumbled the aftermath of the economic collapse, he "suspended" is campaign, and Obama, during their first debate, did not seem at all like a "dangerous" change maker, Axelrod said.
On Rev. Jeremiah Wright and McCain's refusal to allow his campaign to bring up Obama's former preacher, McIntruff noted that when the pressure to do so was at its most intense, McCain was behind 40 points with younger voters and way behind President Bush's level of support among Hispanic voters. Bringing up Wright would have eroded McCain's standing even further, he said.
Plouffe and Axelrod conceded that the four days where Wright dominated the headlines -- this was right after the Pennsylvania primary and right before critical contests in Indiana and North Carolina -- were the toughest of the campaign, or as Plouffe called it, a "moment of great peril." "We failed as a campaign to do our proper research, " he said. Axelrod told an affecting story of how Obama managed to write the full draft of his subsequent speech by himself, squeezing in moments of thought between a hectic campaign schedule. "I don't know anybody else who could have done what he did under the pressure that he was under."
** On Sarah Palin, Davis admitted that the pick looked "risky" by the first of October, but made plenty of sense given the political context of the time. He said McCain remained "very happy" with his decision. And McInturff noted that Palin was the most popular Republican in the country right now.
** McInturff admitted that he mispolled the Southwest. "We missed the Southwest. According to the exit polls ,the Latino vote in New Mexico went from 34 to 41. That's extraordinary if it's true. And there was extraordinary turnout in Nevada."
** Plouffe said that the Obama campaign had set a goal of 90,000 caucus-goers whose support and attendance was either certain - 1s - or mostly certain. They met the goal two days before Iowa, leading Plouffe and the others to believe that the Des Moines Register poll showing Barack Obama winning soundly was picking up on something.
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