O esquadrão

Num momento em que aperta o escrutínio sobre o staff do candidato republicano John McCain, por causa das suas "ligações perigosas" com clientes pouco recomendáveis de importantes grupos de lobby, uma espreitadela ao núcleo duro da campanha, no National Journal de amanhã.


The McCain Squadron

The stalwarts who stuck around after the campaign's crash last summer got the stripped-down, rebuilt machine up and running again.

by Marc Ambinder

Sat. May 17, 2008

When the curtain fell last summer on the Greek tragedy that was the first incarnation of John McCain's 2008 White House bid, his campaign was bankrupt, his public image was battered, and his ego was bruised. The political world quickly moved on.

But a few stalwarts stuck around. They became a volunteer army, pitching in where needed, no matter how menial the task: Dan Crippen, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office with a doctorate in public finance, became known to reporters covering the campaign as "the guy who drives the bus." Brett O'Donnell, whose portfolio included outreach to the Religious Right, ran the TelePrompTer at important McCain speeches. Like many others, McCain's chief policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, another former CBO director, worked without pay.

Jill Hazelbaker found herself suddenly promoted from New Hampshire communications director to chief of that shop for the entire campaign. "When I first came to [the campaign's Virginia-based headquarters in] Arlington, all the first calls I got were, 'When is he going to drop out?' Then the calls began to ask, 'When are you going to take matching funds?' because they thought if we took matching funds, it would only be to pay our debts so he could drop out," she recalls.

Five men--newly appointed campaign manager Rick Davis, election strategist Charles Black, media strategist Mark McKinnon, political adviser Steve Schmidt, and confidant Mark Salter--became the engine of the stripped-down, rebuilt campaign machine.

McCain's mood, reflected in his jokes, became grim. And the five were an unlikely group of morale-boosters: Salter had been on the "wrong" side of the schism that resulted in the July resignations of McCain's longtime strategist, John Weaver, and his hand-picked campaign manager, Terry Nelson. Schmidt was a newcomer working to earn McCain's trust. McKinnon was a George W. Bush guy. Davis sensed that some of the remaining staffers did not trust him. But in the martial language that the McCain campaign favors, the time they spent together in the foxhole fostered unit cohesion. "Consensus" became the watchword. "Everybody had different things to bring to the table, but nobody is there for a reason other than to get John McCain elected," Black said in an interview. "Consensus was our method of operation."

Today the five continue to plot campaign strategy, oversee policy development, put words in McCain's mouth (or try to), and tend to the not inconsiderable ego of the candidate. Their portfolios overlap. And they take on the big challenges, such as overseeing McCain's search for a running mate, together.

In public, they present a united front. As they briefed journalists last month about the campaign's structure, Black, in repose, held his face in one hand and mused about McCain's strength in a general election. Schmidt sat bolt upright, unblinking, scanning the faces of various reporters. Salter, his sunglasses clipped to his shirt, tipped back in his chair, surveyed the scene, and occasionally checked his BlackBerry. Republicans who have sat in on strategy sessions say that the core group seems just as collegial in private.

That isn't to say that the machine always runs smoothly. McCain still occasionally calls Weaver, who before leaving the campaign in July spent years overseeing strategy. But Davis has blocked efforts to formally bring Weaver back into the fold; insiders say that he has threatened at least twice to resign if Weaver is asked to return.

And the campaign's gaffes in recent months have led Republicans inside and outside the McCain camp to question its organizational imperatives. Staffers, for example, were never asked to provide even a cursory Google vetting of the Rev. John Hagee, a pastor who blamed Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans on the city's gay-rights parade, before allowing McCain to appear with him at an endorsement celebration. More recently, two senior aides--the national convention CEO and one of McCain's regional campaign managers--resigned after Newsweek reported that their lobbying firm, DCI Group, once represented Burma's military junta. Longtime allies of McCain's who are not part of the campaign team saw the revelations as evidence that Davis is not doing enough to protect McCain's image as a reformer.

Since essentially wrapping up the Republican nomination, McCain has delivered more than a dozen policy-laden speeches, but the location sometimes seems at odds with the message because it is often determined by where McCain is traveling to raise money.

And some McCain advisers believe that the campaign's rush to lay down markers in various policy areas is counterproductive because McCain tends not to rehearse his remarks very far in advance and has trouble reading them off the TelePrompTer. The more speeches he gives, the fewer chances he has to practice his delivery. Still, McCain personally signs off on every scheduling decision, as does senior adviser Carla Eudy.

Aides blame natural growing pains for some of the confusion. Indeed, the campaign's staff has doubled in two months to about 175. Mini-profiles of McCain's key political and policy advisers follow.

Politics

Rick Davis
Davis, 50, took over as campaign manager last July after serving as the campaign's CEO. In that role, he was responsible for raising money and deciding how the campaign would spend it. He also worked behind the scenes to orchestrate a staff shake-up. Davis, who is close to McCain's wife, Cindy, had managed McCain's 2000 presidential campaign and was in charge of key states for Bob Dole's 1996 White House bid. In 1998, Davis helped found Davis Manafort, a political consulting and lobbying firm that represents companies whose business falls under the jurisdiction of the Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain chaired at the time. Davis has won praise from some of the current campaign's younger staffers for keeping the ship upright and appearing not to hold grudges against those who opposed him during the shake-up. Others, however, remain upset about the McCain loyalists who were pushed out. But media strategist Mark McKinnon told National Journal, "He's done an amazing job of reaching out and inviting people in and opening all the doors. I haven't seen him raise his voice a single time in the entire campaign." Davis doesn't call all of the shots alone, but he controls the budget and the schedule, oversees the policy teams, and coordinates with the Republican National Committee. "Rick's in charge. Everyone knows they work for Rick," election strategist Charles Black says.

Mark Salter
Salter, 53, is variously described in press accounts as McCain's alter ego, his voice, or--more prosaically--his principal speechwriter. But his most important role may be as brand protector. "He is somebody that knows McCain better than anyone else on the campaign," political adviser Steve Schmidt says. Salter is a behind-the-scenes force in policy debates. And in a campaign operation that, like its candidate, is often freewheeling and unpredictable, McCain trusts Salter to shoot down harebrained ideas floated by others who know him less well. Last month, when McCain was set to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the 40th anniversary of his assassination by appearing at the spot where King was killed in Memphis, an overeager aide booked McCain for a roundtable discussion with a controversial liberal Democrat, the Rev. Al Sharpton. Salter learned about the schedule addition as the campaign plane took off for Tennessee. "No. There's no fucking way we're going to do that," he said to no one in particular but within earshot of a National Journal reporter. A quick call to the campaign's Arlington headquarters nixed the idea. Salter's earthy language belies his gift for lyrical prose: He is the co-author/ghostwriter of McCain's five books. Before this campaign, he was McCain's Senate chief of staff (although he preferred the older term, administrative assistant). Earlier, he was an aide to Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick at the United Nations.

Mark McKinnon
McKinnon, 53, functions as the campaign's chief marketing officer, its ideas guy. "This wasn't about doing another presidential campaign," he says, an indirect reference to his role as chief media strategist on the Bush-Cheney campaigns. "In my life, I wanted to check the box for McCain. If that meant carrying his bags and cutting trees in Sedona [in Arizona, where McCain has a ranch], if that meant just me and the interns hanging around headquarters, so be it." McKinnon says that the candidate's personality has fostered a special camaraderie among campaign staffers: "There's an interesting thing about McCain in that he loves human interaction. I literally think this is in part because of his POW experience. He just loves human contact. He'll call at the most unexpected times just to say, 'What do you think about this? What do you think about that?' He loves to know what's going on--rumors, gossip, lies, and jokes." Yet McKinnon says that if the Democrats nominate Barack Obama, he'll leave the McCain campaign because he doesn't want to oppose the election of the nation's first black president. Other advisers say that McKinnon is not involved in message planning when Obama is the subject.

Steve Schmidt
Schmidt, 37, is the newest member of the inner circle but is credited with having the most influence on McCain's approach to politics this time around. "He's been able to find a way for McCain to be comfortable with who he is, with the kind of candidate he is, to not violate John's rather extensive and intricate code of conduct and still be an opponent," Mark Salter explains. A case in point: McCain initially refused to say anything about Obama's relationship with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And McCain's campaign urged the North Carolina Republican Party to pull an ad linking two gubernatorial candidates to Wright through Obama. But Schmidt convinced McCain that he could say he was offended by Wright's remarks, although he would never use them against Obama. Before joining McCain's operation, Schmidt managed the successful re-election campaign of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schmidt has been a senior aide to Vice President Cheney, helped the White House get John Roberts confirmed to the Supreme Court, and directed rapid-response efforts for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

Charles Black
A legend in Washington, Black, 60, has worked on every Republican presidential campaign since 1976. McCain teases him about his age and experience, calling him "the ancient mariner." In April, Black resigned from his Washington advocacy firm, BKSH & Associates, to serve McCain full-time. "Charlie understands one of the golden rules of life," Schmidt says, "which is that everyone is entitled to be treated with respect, no matter what their title is." Black's strong ties to virtually every important person in the Republican Party have helped McCain to repair the rift between the candidate's inner circle and other parts of the GOP that was caused by the 2000 presidential campaign. Black and campaign manager Rick Davis have been friends for decades. "Where Rick ends and where Charlie begins is an open question," one campaign aide remarked. And Black lent his credibility to Davis's effort to ease tensions after last summer's staff shake-up.

Jill Hazelbaker
Hazelbaker, 27, began her political career in Oregon. She later interned for home-state Sen. Gordon Smith before joining the New York City-based Republican firm Mercury Public Affairs, where she learned the basics, from polling to crisis management. Hazelbaker worked on the ill-fated Senate campaign of Jeanine Pirro when she challenged incumbent Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., in 2006. She then signed on with Thomas Kean Jr.'s Senate campaign in New Jersey before jumping at the chance to serve as McCain's New Hampshire communications director. After being promoted last summer, Hazelbaker found the campaign's Arlington headquarters to be "a very lonely office." But there was an upside: She was often the only aide with McCain. "It just was me and him. He didn't have a body guy. He didn't have a traveling aide. That gave us a lot of time to interact," she recalls. What impressed Hazelbaker, the senior staff's youngest member, was how widely McCain consulted, reaching beyond his inner circle for ideas.


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