NYT Mag Piece On McCain Campaign Reveals TEN MILLION MAGICAL SECRETS

...And/or NOT! Yes, that fancy hyped New York Times Magazine piece about the internals of the McCain campaign is now available online, because of YOU, Wonkette readers, who spammed the shit out of Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard inbox yesterday. Good work. Unfortunately, the piece is kind of bleh, with not nearly as much sexy "late Hillary Clinton campaign"-style adviser-on-adviser slap fights. The overall message, which you may have predicted, is that WALNUTS! is not as good of a politician as Barack Obama, ergo the current "losing" situation in which he finds himself deeply embedded. Nevertheless, let's run through some highlights.

• Steve Schmidt brought with him the Bush campaign's orthodoxy of message-discipline, according to one adviser: “This is part of the Schmidt gotta-have-absolute-message-discipline thing. That’s one of the disagreements. And John can be really resistant. He’s always worried about being put in a box. He's got a very sensitive nerve about it. A lot of times I would hear him say: 'Don’t control me. This is my campaign.' But I think Steve has convinced him that we’ve got to do this if we’re going to win." The important thing to note here is that this entire liberal magazine piece is structured around the concept of how Steve Schmidt has chosen 500 different messages about which to be disciplined since he took over the campaign a few months ago. This is called a "fundamental problem."

• The best scene is from late June when McCain's top advisers huddled in a secret sodomy chamber at the Phoenix Ritz Carlton to whine about how they were all losing, especially after Obama's trip to the Middle East and Europe. And then!!!!:

  Eventually, it was Schmidt who blurted out the epiphany concerning Obama. “Face it, gentlemen,” he said. “He’s being treated like a celebrity.”

  The others grasped the concept — a celebrity like J-Lo! or Britney! — and exultation overtook the room.

  Little starbursts erupted from the room's collective pants! And then that worked for a little while -- that Obama was Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, with less boobs -- until...

• ...They decided to select an even greater celebrity dumbass as vice president:

  The new narrative — the Team of Mavericks coming to lay waste the Beltway power alleys — now depended on a fairly inexperienced Alaska politician. The following night, after McCain’s speech brought the convention to a close, one of the campaign’s senior advisers stayed up late at the Hilton bar savoring the triumphant narrative arc. I asked him a rather basic question: “Leaving aside her actual experience, do you know how informed Governor Palin is about the issues of the day?” The senior adviser thought for a moment. Then he looked up from his beer. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.”

 The Making (and Remaking) of McCain [NYT Magazine]