Team McCain: Ready for Prime Time?

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"An Immensely Difficult Time ..."
The stiffest challenge McCain's team faces is the nation's surly mood, which, if surveys are right, is only turning darker. From the giddy confines of the McCain campaign plane in late April, it was easy to imagine the Democratic Party bickering all the way to the August convention. Republicans were scratching their heads in disbelief at their good luck: McCain's approval ratings remained at near historic levels — at more than 60%, some 30 points ahead of the Republican Party brand's. "I think the way things are going, we could say that McCain won this election between March and June," adviser Mark McKinnon allowed at one point.

But then food and gasoline prices jumped, consumer confidence slumped further, and housing prices fell even more. Democrats showed signs that they would end their campaign without going into double overtime, and Bush reappeared onstage, stealing the spotlight by suggesting obliquely that as President, Obama might appease terrorists. The overall effect served as a stark reminder that in order to win, McCain must distance himself from Bush's legacy without abandoning the coalition that won the past two presidential elections. "One of the challenges is for me to reach across the political spectrum," he admits, "but also make sure we re-energize our base in this campaign."

It sounds easy in theory, but in practice it can produce a muddle. In the same breath in which McCain praises Bush's current strategy in Iraq, he condemns the Bush team for bungling the early fighting there. He extols the President's income-tax cuts, which he once opposed, and then criticizes Bush's failure to help the people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. When the President traveled to Phoenix to raise money for McCain recently, McCain's handlers moved the event to a private home to minimize the chance for TV crews to capture the two men together. Privately, his advisers say they are confident that the candidate's reputation as his own man will overcome the Bush stain. But no one doubts it will be a challenge. Says Terry Nelson, who ran the McCain campaign until a staff shake-up last summer: "Frankly, anybody sitting at that table would have an immensely difficult time sorting through what is the winning message for the Republican nominee."

But not all of McCain's problems can be laid at the feet of the incumbent. His penchant for sometimes impulsive action has, in one high-profile case, backfired on his campaign. Reports surfaced in early May that two campaign aides had worked a few years earlier representing the military junta in Burma. When he read the news, he was furious and ordered up a strict new policy against lobbyists on his team. "McCain wasn't happy, and he acted quickly," says an associate of the Senator's. "He said, 'I want the strictest policy against lobbyists we can have, the strictest anybody's ever had.' And that was it."

Except it wasn't. McCain had been leaning on current and former lobbyists for months in part because he's never had a grassroots fund-raising operation akin to Obama's. As a result, he had to shoot down questions about all the special pleaders working for his campaign. "These people have honorable records," he said in February. "And they're honorable people." But his new policy, which was stricter than what some senior advisers favored, undid all that straight talk and prompted a weeklong purge inside the campaign. A number of lobbyists were tossed over the side overnight, generating resentment. Most won't be missed much, but some will: gone is Loeffler, a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia, who played a central role in campaign fund raising and who functioned in effect as chief financial officer. As with others who departed, Loeffler's outside work was no secret inside the campaign. "The story was dead, and they resurrected it themselves," observes a Republican campaign strategist who, like others who spoke with TIME, declined to be interviewed on the record.

Others suggested that the lobbyist problem will make fund raising even harder and has slowed the efforts to scale McCain's lean, insurgent campaign to the size he and his party will need to win in the fall. Back in 2004, Bush built a massive top-down hierarchy that brought a corporate efficiency to politics. The McCain model, by contrast, has been designed to reflect McCain's insurgent personality. While the Bush campaign channeled all decision-making through its northern Virginia headquarters, the McCain campaign has established a decentralized network of 11 "regional campaign managers," who will separately direct much of the campaign in their parts of the country. The goal is to save money, but no one knows if it will work. Veterans of Bush's 2004 incumbent juggernaut say McCain is also far behind schedule in putting boots on the ground. But the more worrisome contrast may be with Obama, who has already spent millions on — and organized thousands of volunteers in — such swing states as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

There are even doubts about whether McCain's unique press strategy — inviting reporters to cycle on and off his motor coach for face time and Q&As — will work in a general-election campaign. Insiders are worried that reporters have too many chances to throw him off his daily talking points. "That's not how you win an election!" says a McCain associate. "McCain is about the only person left who thinks we ought to keep the bus going. Obama keeps the press at a distance. Why? Because he's trying to win!"

For other candidates, such wounds might be mortal, but McCain has defied conventional wisdom and won in the past. His approval rating among independents and some Democrats remains strong, and he is tied with Obama in national surveys. A senior Republican adviser to one of McCain's former rivals appraised the situation this way: "Not raising money, still no excitement, can't seem to get his footing, the Bush brand is toxic, and yet it still looks like he can win," the adviser said. "All that is so John McCain."

— with reporting by James Carney/Washington