Going Into Battle

Schmidt resented being called a disciple of Rove by the press. He did not regard himself as a fearmonger or a practitioner of the dark arts, and indeed he had a sweet, playful side. He told funny stories about being scared of snakes at his California home, and he desperately missed his wife, son and daughter, with whom he had memorized the songs from the Disney fairy-tale movie "Enchanted." After he had been portrayed as a calculating political-machine man in the 2004 NEWSWEEK special election issue, a crestfallen Schmidt asked his friend Nicolle Wallace, Bush's communications director, "Is that really how people see me? The big, bald, mean guy?" Schmidt could be mock-tough. "I'm OK with a reign of terror starting now," he sternly told Salter when the campaign's logistical incompetence was becoming all too apparent to the press late in the spring of 2008. Then he turned to a NEWSWEEK reporter and choked up with laughter. But he could also be severe and grimly focused. Whenever McCain had a rough day in the press, or Schmidt was running on a few hours' sleep after a late night at the bar with Salter, he would declare, throughout the day, "Fun Steve is dead."

At first Schmidt was not an easy fit with campaign manager Rick Davis. In the estimation of Davis, Schmidt suffered from attention-deficit disorder. Schmidt, to be sure, was not very good with columns of numbers (as a student, he had been unable to pass required math at the University of Delaware and had dropped out). But he was relentlessly disciplined and on message—two attributes the campaign sorely lacked. He spoke in declarative sentences, with a flat certainty, which appealed to McCain's fondness for stand-up guys and impulsive, let's-do-it instincts.

In early June, Schmidt took over control of day-to-day operations in the campaign. The press played the move as another major campaign shake-up. The last straw, the press reported, was a sour, poorly staged speech by McCain on June 3, the day Obama formally secured the Democratic nomination. McCain had looked like a grumpy old man. Actually, it was Schmidt who had ordered the sickly green backdrop that made the candidate look old and greenish-gray, and it was Schmidt who had told Salter and McCain to come out hard against Obama. Schmidt wasn't directly replacing Davis—McCain advisers were not so much shoved out as pushed to the side, and Davis retained the title of campaign manager, along with many of the responsibilities. But Schmidt's ascension would profoundly alter the style, feel and fundamental direction of the campaign.

By his own account, Davis had wanted Schmidt to come back to headquarters to help run things. To Davis, it seemed that Schmidt and Salter and others like Charlie Black, a veteran Washington lobbyist who advised McCain, were off having fun on the campaign plane, a merry band of brothers, while he was stuck back at headquarters, overwhelmed by trying to ramp up McCain's cheapskate insurgency into a fully staffed presidential campaign. He needed Schmidt to take charge of the daily message and media operation. If that meant reining in the candidate as he wandered about cracking jokes and saying pretty much whatever came into his mind, so be it.

Still, Davis did not want to lose the spirit of the pirate ship. On March 1, as McCain was securing the nomination, a NEWSWEEK reporter had asked Davis if the time had come to "trim down the pirate ship and become more of a cruise ship." No, Davis responded, "it'll always be a pirate ship. Not because of the size of it, but certainly because of the attitude of it. As long as John McCain's got the patch over the right eye, that ain't going away."

But it did. The last voyage of the pirate ship was called off before it ever left the dock. McCain genuinely loved informal give-and-take. He was fearless (maybe a little too much so) in a town-hall setting, fielding questions from ordinary citizens, or sitting around with reporters on the Straight Talk Express. In early June, he sent a letter to Obama inviting the Illinois senator to participate in a series of joint town-hall meetings. McCain had a romantic idea of traveling the country with a worthy opponent, engaged in a meaningful dialogue that would educate and challenge voters. The idea had been broached by Mark McKinnon, an old Bush adviser, who, in turn, had been inspired by an idea first floated by John F. Kennedy before his assassination in 1963. JFK had wanted to go on a national tour, debating his likely Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater, before the 1964 election. It was a noble-seeming idea, and it might possibly have civilized and elevated the 2008 election. But it was not to be. McCain proposed debating every week until Election Day—some 20 weeks away. Obama's aides were wary of taking on the GOP candidate in forums that seemed to favor McCain's brash, conversational style. They counterproposed two "Lincoln-Douglas style" debates, where each candidate would give an hourlong speech and have a half hour for rebuttal, in addition to the traditional three debates in the fall. This format favored Obama, the orator. The Obamaites wanted the first debate on July 4.

McCain really believed his opponent would do the town halls with him and was disappointed by Obama's response. But his aides were outraged, or pretended to be. (One later confessed to a NEWSWEEK reporter that they never expected Obama to say yes; they were just looking to take the moral high ground.) The Fourth of July, said Rick Davis, was "the worst viewing night of the year," and he told a reporter that the Obama response was "the most sarcastic thing I have ever heard anybody do." The Obama team, for its part, was indignant when the McCain team went to the press with its complaints before negotiating with Obama—or even replying to his counteroffer. Before long, the whole idea collapsed in recriminations.

McCain's inner circle was furious when the press appeared to give Obama a free pass or equally apportioned the blame. The press treatment of the whole affair deepened the perception among McCain's aides that the liberal media establishment was determined to get Obama elected. McCain was no longer the darling of the media, or so it appeared to Schmidt, Salter and Davis. That was the message they wanted to impress on the candidate. Reporters, they told McCain, don't want to debate you about the great issues of the day. They just want "gotcha" stories. The McCain advisers were particularly leery of the "embedded" TV-network producers, who carried small cameras everywhere to capture every campaign moment. Their network bosses back in New York were salivating for footage of McCain stumbling, Schmidt concluded. Salter, still simmering over the New York Times story about McCain and the female lobbyist, agreed. Salter felt betrayed; after all that access, the press just wanted to "get" McCain. The two began warning McCain not to speak to reporters. "When he goes to the back of the bus, Schmidt and I say, 'Danger, danger, not the same press corps. They want to make news today, and the easiest way to make news is if it comes at your expense'," Salter told a NEWSWEEK reporter.

Schmidt, Salter and Davis spent hours working themselves up over the perceived unfairness in coverage. McCain aides began joking that NBC, mother ship of MSNBC's avowedly liberal anchorman Keith Olbermann, had become "National Barack Channel," while Davis scoffed to the NEWSWEEK reporter that "The New York Times has become a 527"—a provision in the tax code regulating such groups) that buys ads to push pet causes, usually with the effect of promoting one candidate or another.

McCain was nonplused about the end of his honeymoon with the press. He liked hanging around with reporters; they were his friends, or at least his sparring partners. (He enjoyed the challenge; "he never met an interview he didn't think he could beat," said his spokesperson, Jill Hazelbaker.) McCain would want to head back to the reporters' section of the plane, and Davis would pull him back. "No, no, no, I want them around me," McCain would say, referring to the reporters. "No, no, no, they're screwing you," Davis would retort.

At McCain's insistence, his new campaign plane this past summer had been fitted with a large bench-style couch, to re-create the space on the Straight Talk Express bus, where the candidate had spent hours jawing on the record with reporters, half a dozen or so at a time. But reporters were never asked to sit there. McCain did not look happy about being kept on a tight leash, as least as far as reporters could tell from a distance. ("It was like withdrawal," Lindsey Graham conceded to a NEWSWEEK reporter.) Around reporters, McCain sometimes looked like a sheepish teenager who has been told by his parents that he has to stop seeing a girl. At a stop in Wisconsin, reporters watched while McCain drank coffee with a delegate. The candidate looked up and made eye contact with the reporters. "How are you guys today?" he said, smiling. Before anyone could say anything, campaign aides swooped in and began ushering reporters from the room. When one reporter tried to talk to McCain, he looked up expectantly and seemed about to say something. "Senator, can I …" the reporter began. An advance man stepped in. "Thank you, let's go," the staffer said.

McCain's almost willful tendency to step all over his scripted lines exasperated his aides. Before Obama left on a widely anticipated overseas trip in mid-July, the McCain camp tried to orchestrate a counterattack. Jill Hazelbaker went on Fox TV's morning show to mock Obama. "Let's drop the pretense that this is a fact-finding trip and call it what it is: the first-of-its-kind campaign rally overseas." She called the trip "one giant photo opportunity." But McCain promptly told reporters that he disagreed with Hazelbaker and that he would speak to her about it. McCain said he was "glad" that Obama was going to Iraq and Afghanistan to see for himself. Hazelbaker was so upset that she did not come to work the next day and refused to take McCain's apologetic phone calls. Schmidt told the candidate in no uncertain terms that he had to change. McCain, for once, seemed to get the message.

On July 24, after touring the Middle East and Europe, meeting with foreign leaders and generally impressing the American and international press, Obama spoke to a huge crowd in Berlin. His campaign was eager to strike echoes of John F. Kennedy traveling to Berlin in 1963, the vibrant young leader thrilling the world with his defiance of Soviet communism. An advance team looked into the possibility of Obama's speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, near the place where Ronald Reagan had challenged the Soviets to "tear down this wall!" in the last days of the cold war. But Obama vetoed the site. He did not want to appear "presumptuous," he told David Axelrod, by speaking at a site normally reserved for heads of state. Still, he ended up speaking on a raised platform before the soaring Victory Column, not too far from the Brandenburg Gate, and the effect was both dramatic and grand.