ike/McCain's No Good, Horrible, Very Bad Week

If I were teaching a class on political races, I would focus some serious class time on messaging. Messaging represents the overarching idea of a campaign and a candidate, the core rational to inspire a voter.

Often, candidates are described as being "on message" or "off message." Here's an example of Barack Obama being on message. Here's an example of Barack Obama being off message.

In the first clip, Obama is in his comfort zone, clearly "on message," underscoring his core message of change, highlighting his opponent's long-standing ties to a broken system and desperate attempts to use the same old divisive politics to attack him. Being "on message" also means being consistent, repeating refrains that reinforce what a candidate stands for.

In the second clip, Obama is "off message." He is discussing his church membership and the remarks of his controversial pastor. He is forced to talk about all of the issues he doesn't want to address: black militantism; fringe elements in his campaign; whether he shares these ideas with his former pastor.

I write these past paragraphs to give some context for what I'm about to say; I haven't seen a candidate have a worse week of messaging than the one John McCain has just endured. Let's review:

On September 15th, John McCain famously declared that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong," which allowed Barack Obama to get back to talking point number one, as seen here.

Well, how sound was the economy? It was so sound, that it caused John McCain to suspend his campaign until the crisis was solved.

So to DC traveled the knight in shining armor, a true leader and the apparent missing link to a bipartisan deal to save Wall Street and the credit markets. Except according to several reports, McCain's presence in Washington only made things worse.

Of course McCain then had to attend the first presidential debate last Friday even though Congress had not reached a deal on a financial rescue package for Wall Street — something that McCain previously said was a condition for his attendance.

Could it get worse? Sadly for McCain, the answer is yes. Minutes after the bailout bill was rejected in the House, with Republicans voting against it at a 2-1 clip, we found out that McCain press guru Steve Schmidt had actually touted McCain's contributions to the "agreement."

"What Senator McCain was able to do was to help bring all of the parties to the table, including the House Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass this," Schmidt said.

No wonder new polls are showing the McCain candidacy floundering. For John McCain, it truly was a no good, horrible, very bad week.