What went wrong in McCains 2008 presidential campaign?

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1 Maverick Politics : John McCain 's 2008 Presidential Bid

What went wrong

In late 2007 and early 2008 the Presidential campaign of Sen . John McCain (R-AZ ) seemed dead in the water . Against the expectations of many McCain was able to retool his campaign and outlast his rivals to win the Republican nomination

It was a remarkable achievement for John McCain to win the republican nomination , then go on to run a highly competitive Presidential race Winning the Presidency is ultimately a function of credentials , timing image

and political skill . McCain had the credentials and the image to win . Unfortunately his timing was not as good and his political skill not enough to overcome this

Money

McCain 's team had to deal with money disadvantages throughout the campaign . Early on , the campaign nearly ran out of money . To his credit the candidate reformed his money team and revamped his fund-raising strategy . 1 Meanwhile , the candidate also refocused and refined his message

Gradually the fortunes of the campaign improved . In reality the republicans had little chance of matching the energized fund-raising of the Obama campaign . Still , McCain could have been more competitive had he taken better advantage of technologies such as the internet . Sen Obama 's campaign smashed all campaign finance records primarily by using the internet . McCain was still competitive , however , until a series of errors late in the campaign

________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________

1 . Allen , Mike . McCain Retools Money Team , Delays Entry Politico .com . 2007 . 10 Jan...