The Nappy Cat Chronicles

Though I’m not a fan, Newsweek has what appears to be the definitive guide to Election ‘08. For just a few hours of reading, the seven chapters cover what a few days of high school history will never (and don’t you secretly want to be smarter than a 16 year old?):

• Chapter 1: Barack Obama: How He Did It
• Chapter 2: John McCain: Back From the Dead?
• Chapter 3: The Long Clinton-Obama Siege
• Chapter 4: McCain Camp Retools, Targets Obama
• Chapter 5: Obama Sweats the Clintons, McCain Gambles on Palin
• Chapter 6: Battling it Out in the Great Debates
• Chapter 7: The Final Days

This series answered a few of questions of mine that had not been adequately answered during the election.

Chapter 4: I don’t know much about Lindsey Graham, but are the rumors true? Is he really a turdbucket? All signs point to “yes”:

Sen. Lindsey Graham was watching on TV. McCain’s friend, who had sharp political instincts, saw an opportunity. As he later recalled, he thought, “Oh, boy,” as he reached for the phone to call McCain. “Look at this!” he exclaimed to the candidate, who was also watching. “Who the hell does this guy think he is? And who are all those Germans, and what are they cheering about?” To Graham, Obama’s speech was all about Obama, grandstanding for a bunch of foreigners.

When did the McCain campaign realize that their lethargic candidate needed a boisterous running mate?

McCain himself seemed grouchy and unhappy on the campaign trail. He was doing fewer town-hall meetings, and his aides, upset when no one laughed at the candidate’s tried and-true jokes at one particularly sorry affair in Belleville, Mich., decided they’d better start packing the hall with McCainiacs. (The audience was full of undecided and skeptical voters; the campaign had been trying to make a point with the press and Obama by daring to plunge the candidate into true arenas of democracy—i.e., before unscreened voters.) Before long, McCain’s “town halls” were almost as tame as George W. Bush’s in 2004, when the president spoke to by-invitation-only crowds.

With the odds overwhelmingly stacked against him, how did Obama win? Obama was a viral candidate infecting hearts and minds as well as Youtubes and cellphone. Future candidates are not aware of this yet—the dust has yet to settle—but, from now on, all campaigns will have to be viral to some degree.

Tap the top button, “call friends,” and the software would take a peek at your phonebook and rearrange it in the order that the campaign was targeting states, so that friends who had, say, Colorado or Virginia area codes would appear at the top. With another tap, the Obama supporter could report back essential data for a voter canvass (”left message,” “not interested,” “already voted,” etc.). It all went into a giant database for Election Day.

Early that summer, the campaign made the unorthodox decision to announce its vice presidential pick via text messages sent directly to supporters. It wasn’t just a trick to do something flashy with technology and attract media attention. The point was to collect voters’ cell-phone numbers for later contact during voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. Thanks to the promotion, the campaign’s list of cell-phone numbers increased several-fold to more than 1 million. (Among the registrees: one Beau Biden, son of Joe.)

“I don’t care about online energy and enthusiasm just for the sake of online energy and enthusiasm,” said Chris Hughes, head of New Media’s social networking. “It’s about making money, making phone calls, embedding video or having video forwarded to friends.” There was nothing starry-eyed about Hughes, who had been the Harvard roommate and later partner of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and made his first millions before he was 24. His goal was to make old techniques—like call centers and getting polling information to voters—more efficient. “When computer applications really take off, they take something people have always done and just make it easier for them to do it,” he said. “And maybe bigger.”

During the primaries, the sight was familiar at vast Obama rallies. Before the candidate appeared, a campaign official would come onstage to urge audience members to pull out their cell phones to call or text their friends and neighbors.

Chapter 5: Though McCain seemed to dislike pandering to them, how beholden to the “religious right” was his campaign?

But when McCain brought up Lieberman’s name at a secret high-level meeting held in Sedona, Ariz., to consider veep choices on Sunday, Aug. 24, his top aides balked. They warned that McCain’s support among evangelicals was already soft. Lieberman was pro-choice on abortion, and a pro-choice pick would deeply antagonize the religious right, maybe even provoke a floor fight at the convention. Pollster Bill McInturff told the group that a pro-choice running mate had the potential to cause a 20-point drop in support among McCain’s core voters. A small uptick in independent voters or crossover Democrats wouldn’t begin to make up the difference. It would be very difficult for McCain to heal the party in the two short months before Election Day.

Chapter 6: Why didn’t McCain look at Obama during the first debate?

Why, one aide asked him, did you never look at Obama? Because you told me not to! McCain retorted. It was true. McCain’s debate coach, Brett O’Donnell, had noted Obama’s tendency to look directly at an opponent while attacking, and he had instructed McCain not to get sucked in by meeting his gaze. But McCain had taken the advice a little too literally. “We didn’t tell you not to look at him at all,” one aide chided him.

How did the McCain campaign perceive a Clinton vice presidential nomination?

He was relieved to face him as the veep choice, and not Hillary Clinton, whom the McCain camp had truly feared. At the vice presidential debate on Oct. 2, McCain was delighted to see that Sarah Palin had irritated Biden. Watching the TV with some aides, McCain exclaimed, “He looks like an angry old senator!”

Why was the McCain campaign so sensitive to the charge that they were running a divisive campaign? Because they held back the really divisive stuff (at least until the last hour).

McCain had set firm boundaries: no Jeremiah Wright; no attacking Michelle Obama; no attacking Obama for not serving in the military. McCain balked at an ad using images of children that suggested that Obama might not protect them from terrorism; Schmidt vetoed ads suggesting that Obama was soft on crime (no Willie Hortons); and before word even got to McCain, Schmidt and Salter scuttled a “celebrity” ad of Obama dancing with talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres (the sight of a black man dancing with a lesbian was deemed too provocative).