Last week, campaign operatives I talked to were puzzled by the fact that it was the low-level staff that was crushed in the Monday Massacre, not the “deciders.” For example, McCain fired all but one staffer in crucial Michigan. A staffer in New Hampshire was literally hired one day before being laid off.
Today’s news solves the puzzle, perhaps. McCain’s departure for Iraq was a convenient way to head off the bad news, but he had to return from Iraq for someone wiser to prevail on him to get rid of the campaign leadership. They, not the low-level guys who got the axe, were really responsible for taking a six-year presidential campaign and running it into the ground in six months.