Is the mcCain campaign being managed adequately?

Politico has an article reporting from people concerned that the McCain campaign is wasting ti8me and not well-organized. Here's a little of it:

McCain game plan worries insiders
By: David Paul Kuhn
July 1, 2008 07:34 PM EST

Four months have passed since John McCain effectively captured the party nomination, and the insiders are getting restless. Top GOP officials, frustrated by what they view as inconsistent messaging, sluggish fundraising and an organization that is too slow to take shape, are growing increasingly uneasy about the direction of the McCain presidential campaign. [Snip]

“It’s not just message or not having just one single meta-theme to compete with Obama,” said a veteran Republican strategist with close ties to McCain’s top advisers. “It’s not just fundraising, which is mediocre. And it’s not even just organization, which is [just] starting or nonexistent in many states.”

“McCain’s campaign seems not to have a game plan. I don’t see a consistent message,” said Ed Rollins, a veteran of Republican presidential campaigns. “As someone who has run campaigns, this campaign is not running smoothly. [Snip]

“Here is where the problem is: We had a nomination gap between when McCain was nominated and the Democratic race completed,” a swing state Republican Party chairman said. “I think [campaign manager] Rick Davis and his team did not have an understanding of how the grass-roots, organizational part of the party works. They did not use what the [Republican National Committee] had done, or how groups like the [National Rifle Association] could have helped the McCain campaign locally.

“They are just now opening up campaign operations in most states. The RNC was ready to go in most states in March,” the state chairman continued, listing off grievances ranging from the campaign's “dictating” the members of various RNC committees to the state party's having been “threatened” that, though McCain “couldn’t afford not to play in our state,” the campaign would not “recommend us for resources” if the state party did not abide by its requests.

One frequent criticism surrounds the widely held perception that the campaign has failed to define or convey a consistent narrative against Obama — something that many Republicans insist should have begun right after Obama captured the nomination.

It should be remembered that the McCain campaign has chronically been short of money, so they may be husbanding their funds for key critical locations.

But another point to remember is that John McCain has never had the responsibility for strategic management of a large organization. Arizona has only a little more than 6,000,000 population and the three major cities - Phoenix, Tuscon and Flagstaff, are not that complicated to campaign in statewide. He has never faced a tough race for Senate, and quickly lost the tough race for President to George W. Bush in 2000. His navy career never required strategic level management. Nor has his Senate career. This is a key limitation that Senators trying to run for President face.

Compare McCain to Obama. Obama appears to understand strategic management, and his loooong race against Hillary certainly gave him the experience and need to conduct strategic management. Obama has already run a campaign in all 50 states, and has organizations in all of them. That's strategic management.

McCain essentially let his opponents in the Republican primary self-destruct and then he took the mantle and ran with it. Only, according to his critics as reported by Politico, McCain has apparently sat on the mantel rather than running with it, while Obama and Clinton fought the lengthy and serious 50-state primary campaigns we have all watched - and which sucked the media air out of whatever McCain might have tried to do.

I strongly agree with General Wes Clark. McCain performed heroically when his plane was shot down and he was severely injured, followed by 5 and a half years as a North Vietnamese POW. But his heroism did NOT in any way give him experience or training as a strategic manager!

The criticisms by Republicans of his campaign this year to date seem to confirm McCain's lack of experience as a strategic manager, and more important, his apparent lack of understanding of Strategic Management.

That's not to say that he won't figure it out in the four months remaining until the election in November. But strategic management is an art that takes a while to learn. I damned sure wouldn't count on McCain getting the picture and applying it in the four months remaining until the election.

Compare this report of McCain's campaign management with Barack's Management Style.