Leadership, huh...

It seems like an eternity ago, but it was only June 3 of this year.

Barack Obama was clinching the Democratic nomination, when John McCain took to the stage in a sparsely populated room in New Orleans, La., to launch his first attack. McCain planted himself in front of a puke green background and declared himself, "A Leader We Can Believe In." That decision, as well as practically every decision since, has proved him to be anything but a leader.

Even if you start on the night in front of the now infamous green backdrop, McCain was the spectacle of a follower. His theme, "A Leader We Can Believe In," was obviously cribbed from Obama's "Change We Can Believe In." He littered his speech with derisions of Obama followed by the mocking, "that's not change we can believe in."

There you have it. On his speech to launch the general election, McCain uses a knock-off of his opponent's words as the Republican theme and slogan. Leadership?

The rest of the campaign has not fared much better for McCain, and every bump in the road can be mapped back to an absense of leadership. First, he sputtered around from slogan to slogan, never really settling on one long enough for it to take root. When that approach faltered, he then brought in the Bush attack team who savaged him in 2000 and turned the reins over to them.

Bush's team immediately plunged McCain's campaign into an appalling display of negativity that ran counter to everything he had modeled throughout his career. The so-called leader did nothing.

The pathway continued downward. McCain offered no grand vision, no overriding philosophy, no uplifting message, just juvenile attacks that his opponent was a celebrity. According to McCain, Obama's great sin was that people liked him...that voters would assemble to actually listen to him. Record-breaking crowds gathered across the United States and throughout Europe for first-hand exposure to the message of hope and change. No one was following 'the leader.'

Then came the worst mistake of all. After vetting vice president contenders for months, he held a short conversation with a little-known governor from Alaska. Thirty minutes later, he had a nominee. The leadership virtues of consultation and deliberation, of exercising reasonable judgment, were all casualties to his impulses. It was the Magic 8 Ball at the helm. The leader followed.

The other missteps are recent enough to recall with clarity. He careened through the economic meltdown, bouncing from position to position like a pinball. In a final act of desperation, he cast his sailor's honor overboard and began steering his campaign through the mud and sludge directly to the rocky shore.

The passengers aboard the SSS McCain Disaster, sensing their iminent doom, have begun to jump overboard. The captain of the ship plows on...either oblivious to the fact that his crew is deserting him or powerless to do anything about it. Neither being a striking display of leadership.

So here we are...nine days before the election, and news organizations are reporting this his VP nominee is the latest to abandon him. She had always let it be known publicly when she didn't agree with one of McCain's decisions (pulling out of Michigan, not using Rev. Wright to attack Obama, for examples), but we were to see a more brazen display of disloyalty. Campaign staff for both McCain and Palin are going on the record to say that she is out for herself at this point. Ignoring advice from McCain and doing her own thing. And with all this going on, not a word from McCain.

Leadership, huh.

It's the questions, stupid

For weeks, Republicans told us the culprit in Sarah Palin's dismal interview performances were the questions. Tonight, her relative success in the vice presidential debate could also be attributed to the questions.

By now most people have seen the 500 video clips of Katie Couric's interview of Sarah Palin that CBS has been dribbling out over the last week or so. The cringe-inducing performances even had conservatives questioning her openly. Of course, the right wing faithful told us the real problem were the questions. They were gotcha questions.

Q:What newspapers do you read?
Rep: Foul! No one would ask that of a man.
Q: Name a Supreme Court decision you don't agree with?
Rep: Foul! She is an outsider and didn't need to concern herself with supreme court decisions. That's not something a president needs to know, they said with straight faces.

During the debate however, Palin benefited from Gwen Ifill's boringly predictable questions. It was as if she went to the campaign websites and turned their policy papers into questions. They were all so utterly predictable. None made you look at the subject from a different perspective. None seemed to be designed to elicit a thoughtful response, so she rarely got any.

Of course this suited Sarah Palin just fine. Now she could recite her talking points with generous helping of "Golly Gee Beav..." At one point when Joe Biden was responding you could see Sarah Palin giggling to herself with that giddy "she's asking all my questions" smile.

Traditional media training always emphasizes that it's not the questions that sink you, it's the answers. In Palin's case, the questions are the ones that help her sink or swim.