Notice The Difference?

So you have two campaigns. I'll leave off the partisan identification for the moment.

One has just thrown overboard its second campaign manager in a matter of months. He had to respond to those within his own party who were concerned that the campaign was faltering and not taking advantage of the turmoil on the other side. A unique series of decentralized regional campaign offices was dismantled and now must be rebuilt as a more top-down organization in a matter of months. The new staff comes from acolytes to the architect of one of the worst midterm losses in electoral history, where his party didn't capture a single seat from an incumbent for federal office anywhere in the country.

Now, the other campaign has a tightly focused, buttoned-up campaign which has gone largely unchanged since the beginning of the year, adding more staff only for the general election. There are no egos, their names rarely get in the papers, and they have built an almost unprecedented modern organization in all 50 states, with passionate supporters numbering maybe in the millions ready to work between now and Election Day. The discipline and effectiveness is remarkable.

Believe it or not, paragraph #1 describes the Republican nominee, and paragraph #2 describes the Democratic nominee.

It's a strange year.

I will also say this about the rise of the Rovians inside McCain's campaign. First of all, it's the end of the "reformer" model. That was already dead with all the lobbyists and insiders crawling around the campaign, but now it's truly dead and buried. I think the Republican bigwigs have taken a look at the polling and recognized that the only way to beat Obama is to go hard negative, to try to turn him into a combination between Michael Dukakis and Malcolm X and hope that they can fool the nation again.

Problem is, they're up against a far more formidable opponent this time around.