Steve Schmidt: An Adviser Molds a Tighter, More Aggressive McCain Campaign

[Sam Spade]

This is the second, or so, article I've seen about Steve Schmidt from the NY Times.  Note his fascination with modern media and the cult of celebrity.
An Adviser Molds a Tighter, More Aggressive McCain Campaign

By JIM RUTENBERG and ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published September 6, 2008

ST. PAUL — It was what aides to Senator John McCain describe as probably the worst night of his campaign. As Senator Barack Obama claimed the Democratic nomination before a cheering sea of faces on national television, Mr. McCain countered with a lackluster speech in a half-empty hall, posed in front of a pea-green screen that became fodder for late-night comedy.

Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain who worked on President Bush’s campaign in 2004, could barely hide his fury in the coming days, as he announced — to anyone who would listen — that he would personally make certain the McCain campaign would never again embarrass Mr. McCain.

“Fun Steve is dead,” Mr. Schmidt said.

In the three months since that night in June, the McCain organization has become a campaign transformed: an elbows-out, risk-taking, disciplined machine that was on display here last week at the Republican convention that nominated Mr. McCain. And the catalyst for the change has largely been Mr. Schmidt, 37, a veteran of the winning 2002 Congressional and 2004 presidential campaigns, where he worked closely with Karl Rove, then Mr. Bush’s senior strategist.

Mr. Schmidt’s stamp on the campaign this year was evident from the opening day of the convention to Mr. McCain’s acceptance speech on Thursday.

His stamp was reflected in the sharp tone of the scathing prime-time speeches, all of which Mr. Schmidt reviewed and approved, and some of which were criticized as stretching the truth. It was evident in the campaign’s fierce attacks on news organizations as they examined the extent to which Mr. McCain had vetted Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska when he chose her as his running mate, and reported on the pregnancy of her teenage daughter (the disclosures were released just as Hurricane Gustav was hitting the Gulf Coast, in a gambit of news management that is one hallmark of Mr. Schmidt’s style).

And it could be seen in the ubiquitous slogan “Country First” — as in, Mr. McCain puts it there, Mr. Obama does not.

The changes in Mr. McCain’s operation were noted approvingly by Republican leaders, who once despaired at his chances against Mr. Obama. “It’s steadily improving — in terms of performance, organization, offense,” said Fergus Cullen, the party chairman in New Hampshire. “There were definitely early bumps and now things are getting accomplished.”

Mr. Rove said Mr. Schmidt’s increased authority — which came about after what amounted to a coup by Mr. Schmidt and other McCain aides with ties to the 2004 campaign, that gave him equal status with the campaign manager, Rick Davis — has been the best thing to have happened to Mr. McCain.

“Since the elevation of Schmidt and his new responsibilities, he’s given the campaign a new focus and energy and drive that’s been very impressive,” Mr. Rove said. “They’ve had a much better July and August than April and May.”

Mr. Schmidt declined a request for an interview.

Still, the new tone has been jarring to some veterans of Mr. McCain’s presidential run in 2000 who worry that the campaign exudes a cynicism that undercuts the senator’s old reputation for “straight talk” and a more elevated style of politicking. On a number of occasions, Mr. McCain’s campaign advertisements have been described by campaign watchdog organizations as false or misleading, particularly those attacking Mr. Obama on tax votes.

And the level of aggressiveness and risk-taking advocated by the hard-charging Mr. Schmidt leads to misses as well as hits; it certainly stands in contrast to the more orderly, controlled Obama campaign.

“It’s quite different, often strikingly so, sometimes alarmingly so,” Todd Harris, who was an adviser to Mr. McCain’s 2000 campaign, said of the tone now compared with the tone then. “But it’s important to realize that we lost in 2000, so I’m not sure we’re in any position to give lectures about how to effectively win a national election with John McCain.”

It was just that sort of thinking that led Mr. McCain to give Mr. Schmidt and his street-brawling style of politics such prominence.

Mr. Schmidt is not quite a grand political strategist or tactician like Mr. Rove. His role for Mr. Bush in 2004 was running the war room — orchestrating often savage attacks on opponents, responding instantly to breaking news, digging up damaging information and pushing back on any criticism — and that shoot-first mentality infuses the culture of the retooled McCain campaign.

But with a drill sergeant’s hectoring and a football coach’s motivating, Mr. Schmidt, a thick tower of man with a shaved head who can go from jovial to belligerent in an instant, has largely imposed on Mr. McCain’s once loose and feuding campaign the Bush tenets for success: relentless consistency in a combative message honed to disqualify opponents, hammered home by a campaign with clean lines of command.

“He brings a single-minded intensity and focus to the campaigns he’s involved in,” said Howard Wolfson, who oversaw the war room of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as an adviser in her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. “He’s the guy who knows the value of waking up every day and knowing what you are going to say at end of the day about your candidate and your opponent.”

Mr. Schmidt is considered by members of both parties to have a superior sense of a greatly altered news media environment, caused by the proliferation of political Web sites and blogs, providing all different ways of getting out information. This new environment, he has told friends, is easily manipulated because of round-the-clock thirst for news, increased competition, lowered standards created by the proliferation of outlets and hunger for the outrageous.

It was Mr. Schmidt, a fan of both pop culture and Ultimate Fighting, who pressed for the campaign to include Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in advertisements attacking Mr. Obama, aides said. It was Mr. Schmidt, they said, who pushed to drive blogs and other media organizations to present Mr. Obama’s outdoor convention setting as a pretentious temple by circulating photographs of columns and sending out a news release calling it the “Temple of Obama,” which were gobbled up by Web sites and cable television shows.

“He can recognize the absurdity of politics, and is an occasional practitioner,” said Brian Jones, who served with Mr. Schmidt on the Bush campaign and, for a time, on the McCain campaign. “He understands how people relate to politics in a real tactile way. Why would this guy build a stage set that looks like a Temple of Zeus?”

Mark Salter, a senior McCain adviser, said Mr. Schmidt had brought a new mentality to this campaign. “I had no experience with a national campaign,” Mr. Salter said. “My experience was I worked in the 2000 primary in a contest that died after Super Tuesday. And modern campaigns really changed after 2004.”

If some of Mr. McCain’s friends are distressed at the tone and nature of the campaign, Mr. McCain knew what he was getting with Mr. Schmidt, as he gradually drew him from part-time status — his wife and two children live in California, and for a while, Mr. Schmidt was making weekly trips to visit them — into an ever-greater role. Mr. Schmidt had helped oversee the war rooms of the National Republican Congressional Committee during the 2002 races, the 2004 Bush campaign and the White House’s Supreme Court nomination fights on behalf of Samuel A. Alito Jr. and John G. Roberts Jr.

Mr. Schmidt traveled with Mr. McCain for the first part of the year. But Mr. McCain sent him back to the headquarters in Northern Virginia after Republican complaints about Mr. McCain’s struggling campaign, epitomized by that Green Wall episode.

Mr. Schmidt gave the war room a more central place in Mr. McCain’s campaign, streamlining its decision making so only a few key aides decide what is worthy of response and, more important in Mr. Schmidt’s view, what presents an opportunity to attack Mr. Obama as elite, out of touch and lacking substance. Junior aides work shifts across 24 hours, scouring news outlets for tidbits with the potential to embarrass Mr. Obama through circulation to bloggers, the Drudge Report, cable news and newspapers.

“Folks are playing closer attention, there’s more focus, the arguments are more precise, they cut more cleanly,” said Danny Diaz, communications director of the Republican National Committee, adding that Mr. Davis and other staff members deserved credit as part of what several aides called a more cohesive team.

At the Democratic convention last month, a team of McCain and Republican Party operatives dispatched by Mr. Schmidt huddled in a Denver war room sprung into action when they found what they considered a gem: a photograph of Mr. Obama’s stage set at Invesco Field that they thought looked like a Roman or Athenian ruin.

The room exploded with a whoop of “boo-yah,” and instantly went to work, pressing the perception to receptive reporters and producing heavy coverage throughout the Web, newspapers and cable news.

That sort of speed and spirit inevitably leads to some mistakes. Three months after Mr. Schmidt’s “Fun Steve is dead” declaration, there was Mr. McCain giving his acceptance speech at the convention on Thursday night. His backdrop? A shimmering screen of green, until it was switched over to a more dignified blue.