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McCain Narrative 1: The Heroic Fighter vs. the Quitters

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, History, McCain

As mentioned before, I’m posting excerpts from the NY Times article about the McCain campaign and its shifting narratives. For the intro to the piece, start here.

And so starts McCain’s 1st narrative…the one that captured the nomination for him when his campaign looked all but over.

From NY Times:

Virtually all of his senior staff members, Schmidt and Davis among them, had been begging McCain to focus on the economy, health care and tax policy. Anything, really, except Bush’s war. But according to several senior advisers, the candidate felt a deep sense of responsibility to cheerlead for the troop surge, which he believed would turn the tide in Iraq. It began to dawn on Schmidt that McCain’s stubborn patronage of an unpopular war wasn’t impeding the campaign’s quest for narrative — it was the narrative.

“Sir, is the surge working?” he said he asked McCain one day. “Are we winning?”

“Yes,” McCain said.

“That’s not what you’re saying on the trail.”

“It is!”

“No, sir. It’s not. You’re saying things are getting better. Do you believe we’re actually winning now?”

McCain indicated that he did.

“Well, going forward, that’s what you should say,” Schmidt replied. He encouraged McCain to denounce the Democrats for advocating a withdrawal of troops — a kind of surrender in the face of victory. Thus did Schmidt initiate the No Surrender Tour late in the summer of 2007, a push through the early primary states that saw John McCain surrounded by war veterans while he lashed out at weak-kneed war critics.

And it worked. McCain’s and Schmidt’s gamble on pushing his position on the surge helped him gain credibility with Republican primary voters, and it was nearly a cake walk to the nomination.

But then the general election came, and that’s when things started getting tricky…


This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, History, McCain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “McCain Narrative 1: The Heroic Fighter vs. the Quitters”

  1. Donklephant » Blog Archive » McCain Narrative 6: The Fighter (Again) vs. the Tax-and-Spend Liberal Says:
    October 23rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    [...] series concludes with this post, but you can also read the intro, Narrative 1, Narrative 2, Narrative 3, Narrative 4 and Narrative [...]

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