Well, at least John McCain got a lot of free publicity. It was in an endless series of articles, soundbytes & Web posts about how his campaign is basically sunk, but still.

Seriously though lets face facts, this change of staff was heavily needed. McCain was blowing through money and you can read the TIME story about how that might have happened. In addition it is obvious that the old guards surrounding McCain might have been too close to him. There was absolutely no evidence McCain was being challenged or if he was that anyone had the ability to actually reach him.

How do I know though that McCain’s problems were not entirely staff related? His first e-mail out yesterday in the aftermath and he was back to using “My Friends” before paragraphs. Not so good.

There are two simple reasons why McCain is not doing well.
1) He is out of touch
2) He is on the losing side of the most important issues to Republican primary voters and, well, voters in general

Because of that he hasn’t risen money, he isn’t polling well and that fantastic media attention he had in 2000 has now turned negative. If there is a third reason it is that he has also lost his “maverick” title. Why? Because he now has joined with the establishment of George Bush’s administration. Worse yet he joined the establishment the moment everyone decided they wanted something different.

Can McCain turn things around? Sure. The problem is he doesn’t have the money on hand to do it at this point. Looking over his Q2 schedule, as I have noted several times, McCain was basically fundraising 24/7 and yet he couldn’t bring in the cash & he blew through what he did.

He can change his positions but he won’t and at this point he will just be seen as a “flip-flopping” campaigner with no principals to stand on. He can also drop the “my friends” stuff and make some more Daily Show appearances, but it won’t stop his age and it won’t change his physical appearance which screams out of touch.

You can blame the campaign staff and he should but ultimately he is the one at the top and he has done a terrible job so far.