Good article. An excerpt:
Heading into the general-election campaign in June, Sen. McCain had been in a good place. He had won the Republican nomination early enough to be rested and ready after the bitterly fought Obama-Clinton contest.
But in a strategy session of five McCain advisers -- campaign manager Rick Davis, pollster Bill McInturff, strategist Steve Schmidt, ad-maker Fred Davis and strategist Greg Strimple -- the back and forth revealed a fundamental problem. Fred Davis posed a question designed to give the campaign a central focus: "Why should we elect John McCain?" Tellingly, after several hours of debate, the five couldn't reach a consensus.
"Without an overriding rationale, our campaign necessarily turned tactical rather than strategic," one adviser recalls. "We focused more on why Obama should not be president, but much less on why McCain should be."
By contrast, the Obama team hewed tightly to its original "framing theory," says David Axelrod, its chief strategist, who had worked with the Illinois Democratic senator for years. "From the start, we defined this election as about change versus more of the same."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122586043326400685.html#printMode
