McCain Bad Decision Watch #1

One of my personal hypotheses about John McCain is that he's not a good manager or decision-maker. In fact, he's basically a one-man band kind of guy. McCain's most comfortable in situations where it's just him on the spot--off-the-cuff speaking, television interviews, town hall meetings, and debates. His presidential campaigns work best when it's just McCain, a few of his close allies, and a bus rolling across the countryside. McCain especially likes to be coddled in as everybody's "studmuffin" and is at his best when he's being coddled, nurtured, and buttered-up by the mainstream media.

Otherwise, he gets angry and has the kind of temper tantrums he threw at Elizabeth Bumiller of the New York Times.

At the same time, McCain doesn't "do" organization very well at all. McCain's never been good at building campaign organizations himself, never been good at hiring people to build campaign organizations, and never been good at fundraising. Perhaps McCain just isn't effective when it isn't "all John all the time."

Now that McCain is the Republican nominee, however, he's going to be the head of a large campaign organization, he gets to choose the top leadership of the Republican National Committee, and he has to be coordinated with various Republican elites.

My bet is that McCain botches up the whole thing and makes his general election campaign even tougher than it was going to be.

The first evidence of McCain's poor decision-making was the idea to seek out the endorsement of a megachurch superstar and general all-round bigot like Rev. James Hagee. That led to three straight days of uncomfortable backtracking. Following the NYT story on Vicki Iseman, McCain now has had two straight weeks of bad press in the wake of sewing up the Republican nomination.

Not a great start.

Today, Robert Novak complains about McCain choosing Carly Fiorina as the finance chair for his presidential campaign.

Conservatives and party regulars were not happy about the selection of Carly Fiorina to head the Republican National Committee's "Victory 2008" campaign raising funds for the presidential election . . . .

Federal Election Commission records show Fiorina contributed nothing to the Republican Party the last eight years. Her only political giving was to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign -- $2,100 in 2006 and $2,300 in 2007. Fiorina was at McCain's side when he campaigned in the critical Michigan and Florida races.

Fiorina has no standing in the conservative movement and has taken no position on the abortion question.

Given her status as a celebrity ex-ceo of Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina is going to serve mostly as a celebrity spokesperson for McCain's poorly formulated and ad hoc economic policies. If she's really in charge of campaign fund-raising as well, it's most likely another bad decision on McCain's part.