An old fashioned campaign

John McCain is suggesting that he and Barack Obama travel on the same plane to make 10 joint appearances at town hall events.

This proposal is similar to what John Kennedy and Barry Goldwater were considering back in 1963 when it seemed the Arizona Senator would be the GOP nominee.

The Vietnam caucus

Matt Bai, at the start of his long profile of McCain in the New York Times Magazine, discusses why McCain has found himself in opposition to the military measures undertaken by his fellow Vietnam veterans.

They are wary of seeming to denigrate McCain’s service, marked by his legendary endurance in a Hanoi prison camp, when in fact they remain, to this day, in awe of it. And yet in private discussions with friends and colleagues, some of them have pointed out that McCain, who was shot down and captured in 1967, spent the worst and most costly years of the war sealed away, both from the rice paddies of Indochina and from the outside world. During those years, McCain did not share the disillusioning and morally jarring experiences of soldiers like Kerry, Webb and Hagel, who found themselves unable to recognize their enemy in the confusion of the jungle; he never underwent the conversion that caused Kerry, for one, to toss away some of his war decorations during a protest at the Capitol. Whatever anger McCain felt remained focused on his captors, not on his own superiors back in Washington.

For his part, Bai points out that former Sen. Bob Kerrey disagrees with this characterization.

Primay absence

Despite repeated mentions of Hillary and Barack's quarrels over white voters on today's Sunday talk shows, there was nary a mention of Doug Goodyear, McCain's handpicked choice to run the Twin Cities' Republican National Convention, who resigned yesterday after a Newsweek story revealing him as the the Burmese military junta's lobbyist to Washington.

So it seems McCain will come away from this unsavory tie unscathed. But Democrats should ask themselves, 'Would he have gotten off so easily had Hillary stepped down earlier this week?'

Lieberman whipping Clinton Dems for McCain?

So says Bob Novak.

Help or hurt?

The editorial board of the Washington Times says that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told them that he is too conservative to be John McCain's running mate.

Perhaps they are paraphrasing him, because Barbour is never quoted as explicitly saying so in the interview.

So why is McKinnon still with McCain?

"I would simply be uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama." - Top John McCain media strategist Mark McKinnon on February 13, explaining why he would leave the Republican's campaign if Obama became the Democratic nominee.



These ads were not made by McCain, but they are from an organization he's directly linked to and arguably the nominal head of.

If McKinnon is true to his word, he should leave now; yet he's rolling along -- quite literally -- on McCain's bus in Kentucky.

"In the Bush campaign we used to say that we won the campaign in 2000 and 2004 between March and June," McKinnon told Time earlier today. "And I think the way things are going we could say that McCain won this election between March and June."

Well if it's over by then, why ever leave?

Search engine informational warfare

Via Mike Allen:

Someone bought TuckerBounds.com for $10.19 yesterday. Hint: It wasn't Tucker Bounds.

If this is a Google-bomb/AdWords-driven spokesman watchdog group, then... wow.

If 2006 was a precursor, it looks like this will be the year of full-blown search engine informational warfare.

Quick-draw response teams

Chuck Todd, on the message machines:

For all the recycled Clinton-Obama bickering this past weekend -- over health care, who’s being more negative, and who’s saying nice things about Republicans or using GOP talking points -- Democrats should be encouraged by what they're seeing in terms of the general election, at least when it comes to the blocking and tackling of politics. Their rapid response teams of both these campaigns are well oiled and battle tested. And as Newsweek reported, Team Obama is expanding its rapid response squad for the general. But the same can’t be said for team McCain, which isn’t quite sure whether its opponent will be Obama or Clinton and which hasn’t engaged in all-out political fight since Florida back in January.

Stay classy, John McCain

While a tenth of the electorate falsely believes that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, John McCain is fundraising off the specter of fear Obama would be an agent for the Palestinian terror organization Hamas, even impugning his theme of 'change.'

Barack Obama's foreign policy plans have even won him praise from Hamas leaders. Ahmed Yousef, chief political adviser to the Hamas Prime Minister said, "We like Mr. Obama and we hope he will win the election. He has a vision to change America."

What McCain doesn't want his supporters to know is that today Obama received the endorsement of former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn -- an endorsement that shows it is Obama who has done more to fight the terrorist threats against our homeland.

Nunn is co-chairman and C.E.O. of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization with the mission to bring together people with different ideological views to close the gap between the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. It's a phenomenal group, combining science and diplomacy, working with allied and even not-so allied nations to track down and destroy dangerous materials, while bringing much needed attention to the most overlooked front in our struggle against large-scale terrorism.

Obama understands the magnitude of the threat and has taken action. Last summer, the Lugar-Obama nonproliferation initiative secured a $48 million funding increase to destroy conventional weapons stockpiles, seek to intercept weapons of mass destruction and respond to proliferation emergencies. It's a small step, but a good signal to the priorities he would set as president.

Passing the buck getting worn

McCain makes another national security gaffe. Had he not paid attention, or was he falling back on a familiar ploy: 'When in doubt, pass the buck to Petraeus.'

Speaking Monday at the annual meeting of the Associated Press, McCain was asked whether he, if elected, would shift combat troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to intensify the search for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

"I would not do that unless Gen. [David] Petraeus said that he felt that the situation called for that," McCain said, referring to the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Petraeus, however, made clear last week that he has nothing to do with the decision. Testifying last week before four congressional committees, including the Senate Armed Services Committee on which McCain is the ranking Republican, Petraeus said the decision about whether troops could be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan was not his responsibility because his portfolio is limited to the multi-national force in Iraq.

Perhaps a bit of both.

Senor gets burned

Dan Senor made news when he said on This Week that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was putting out political feelers to get her the number two spot on John McCain's ticket.

But yesterday, she told the AP, “I don’t want to be, don’t intend to be, won’t be on the ticket.”

Rove, Bush 41 for Vice President Romney

Karl Rove and George Herbert Walker Bush are supporting Mitt Romney's bid to be John McCain's VP, sources tell John Heilemann of New York magazine.

Battling for McCain

Two articles out today discuss rival factions competing for dominance in John McCain's camp.

'Papa John' by Jason Zengerle of The New Republic discusses infighting in McCain's core campaign structure, with the antagonists being former top aide John Weaver and current campaign manager Rick Nelson.

And Liz Bummiller and Larry Rohter's New York Times piece, '2 Camps Trying to Influence McCain on Foreign Policy,' pits realist Henry Kissinger against neoconservative Bob Kagan.

The former explains a lot and really speaks for itself, while the latter fight is much more volatile at this point. Remember back to August of 2006, it was thought that Robert Zoellick was going to be the big thinker behind McCain's candidacy. Now he's at the World Bank trying to help deflate food prices.

The 'once-it's-settled' bump

Chuck Todd sure is a smart guy. He plots McCain's course to victory in a column, predicting a huge Democratic bump -- "like post-convention" -- once their nominating contest is complete. The sooner he can prepare the pundits to absorb this as something that is expectable, the better he will fare.

But then it's a matter of survival, and the numbers are important.

If McCain’s is hanging in, behind by 10 or so points, then it is clear he will have a shot. If the bounce pushes the Democratic nominee to as much as a 15 point lead, it may be very demoralizing to the GOP.

McCain's downfall

Michael Scherer captures Senator Bob Bennett's (R - UT) take on McCain's initial rise and subsequent fall.

"John McCain's people came into Utah and they said, You may not like John McCain, indeed you may hate John McCain -- doesn't make any difference," Bennett said. "Here is a poll that shows that John McCain can beat Hillary Clinton." But Bennett said that strategy only worked until former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani arrived on the scene. "Giuliani got in, and what's the first thing that the Giuliani campaign put out? A poll that shows Giuliani beating Hillary Clinton by a bigger margin."

Confidence in McCain

According to the Gallup Poll, the public is just as confident in John McCain's ability to handle Iraq as Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.