McCain doesn't speak for campaign

The New York Times takes a look at McCain's campaign, and notices the same thing I have. It seems that anytime McCain breaks news with his own mouth, his staff walks it back within hours. It's embarrassing.

Mr. McCain is known to sign off on big campaign decisions and then to march off his own reservation. Two weeks ago, he publicly disagreed with his own spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, after she used a line of attack against Senator Barack Obama that he had approved after careful strategizing within his campaign. Ms. Hazelbaker raced out of the Virginia campaign headquarters and refused to take Mr. McCain’s calls of apology, aides said, and a plan to have Republican members of Congress use the same critical line about Mr. Obama’s foreign trip fell apart.

This happens with McCain again and again. The most recent one I can think of is his saying that "everything is on the table" regarding "fixing" Social Security. Not 6 hours went by before his spokespeople were saying that raising the payroll tax was not on the table. Brilliant. Or how about the time McCain's campaign was going around questioning the validity of the foreign trip they themselves had goaded Obama into, calling it the first every political rally held overseas. In this case, it was McCain that walked back the campaign, disagreeing with his own staff and showing that he has difficulty controlling the relatively small campaign organization he now leads. It has not been an inspiring performance, thus far.