McCain Changes Desktop Wallpaper

The pre-spin for the week has been spun: That John McCain is hitting the "reset" button on his crashing campaign. Like a computer that froze, the spin goes, McCain is rebooting everything, starting today.

Except he's not. All McCain is doing is changing the desktop wallpaper. All he's doing is making a modest style change, as pop-up warnings have melted down his campaign -- "The Program 'Economic Policy' has stopped working; Click Here to Force It To Close..." "Error: Your Campaign Extension File 'Negative Attack' Is Out of Date...." "Warning: Your Preferences File 'Strategy' Has Been Infected With the 'Erratic' Virus..."

No, nothing is changing today, except that McCain is giving a new speech. To wit:

- His campaign argued all weekend about coming out with new policy prescriptions that might help the middle class, and decided against providing any program details that would help America's working families.

- While Senator McCain wants people to think he's turning the page of innuendo and negative smears, just this weekend he refused to say that comparing Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden is beyond the pale. Also, his campaign has done nothing to change the fact that they're running 100 percent negative ads.

- And finally, the speech he is giving today, itself, is just one more bit of evidence of a candidate and campaign flailing around, unable to stick to one strategy, and unable to provide a cogent argument for why the Senator should be President. In fact, it seems that the crux of the speech is McCain arguing that his military service is the reason. And this is a reboot?

A 'reboot' of the campaign would be the Senator announcing that he's dumping his past policy proposals, and introducing an intricate and thought-out policy prescription of America, that he is taking all of his negative ads off the air, forbidding his campaign from bringing up Bill Ayers anymore, and that no matter what, this is what he's sticking with for the final weeks of the campaign, come hell or high water.

Of course, we'll have to see if the media is smart enough to tell the difference between restarting the whole computer and changing the wallpaper from a meadow scene to an underwater scene.

Comments

[JumpyJack]

As a software engineer I have to disagree with the article. The author argues that McCain hasn't done the 'reboot' of his campaign as promised, and that he really should have. Well first, let me point out that rebooting doesn't really solve much except minor runtime errors. So I think that McCain may actually have done the reboot (and since he's quite old, he's still booting), but the problem is that after a reboot all of his files will remain as corrupt, out of date and infected as they were before. What he should have done instead is a REFORMAT, or at least a system recovery from a restore point from a year ago, when his drivers were still working properly.

[standard]

Very, very nicely put.

[Bitsko]

Nice analogy and commentary, Mr. Schmeltzer.

[cloudy]

This well describes where McCain's campaign is now, AFAIK. One of Obama's best lines in his blockbuster speech today was a reference to the McCain people themselves determining that if they focused on the economy, they'd lose, so instead they're focusing on attacking BHO himself.

If McCain's to seriously "reboot" his campaign message/mode/etc he needs to do it b/t today (Oct 13) & the end of the debate Wed. After then, his diminishing chances of victory will depend on some kind of drastic development, of which at least 2 come readily to mind:

First, a major security/terrorism crisis, almost surely manufactured by the W Bush Administration. I posted a poll for Democratic Undergrounders (DUers) [for those interested, URL is:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7415972]

& out of nearly 70 respondents as of this writing, over 56% think such a development LIKELY. DU's hardly representative of America, but here's something that needs 2B looked at.

The other development, HARDLY precluded by the 1st, is a massive election-theft effort, which in my understanding, is already ongoing, & a matter of virtual certainty (after 00 and 04). But under political conditions 2day, it ain't ez. Exaggerated notions of the "Bradley Effect" (which Castro fed into recently) lends MORE plausibility to any such massive effort.

I'd very much like to see, FWIW, an analysis of the situation starting w/ the content of BHO's emergency rescue package, the McCain camp response and/or counterproposal(s), & the debate Weds nite.

[Bitsko]

Interesting, but I don't understand your abbreviations.

[tcagle]

Kinda like changing Depends, isn't it?

[blood1]

Well, the media may give him a pass, the American public won't...we've already seen this movie. Unless we see him fire RDavis and the rest of his talking heads...no one will believe him. He has used all his political capital, lost all his moral authority and his POW military history credit card is over his limit...oh I get it, he will borrow the $700billion bailout /loan for the next 3 weeks.

The American Public own that money and WE are telling McCain that he does not qualify for that loan.