McCain Adviser Admits Campaign Mistakes

A senior advisor to the suspended presidential campaign of Sen. John S. McCain acknowledged yesterday that the candidate and his staff made serious strategic mistakes in the weeks prior to the primaries on Super Tuesday.

Dan Schnur, who served as communications director for McCain's operation, said that when the organization "acted like a conventional campaign," it fostered an atmosphere which destroyed McCain's quixotic bid for the presidency.

Schnur spoke yesterday at the Kennedy School of Government in an informal luncheon co-sponsored by the Institute of Politics and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

"We made three major mistakes, and a million little ones," Schnur told a crowd of more than 50 students, faculty and staff.

The first major mistake, he said, was a series of television advertisements comparing Texas Gov. George W. Bush to President Clinton, which aired in South Carolina prior to the state's

Feb. 19 primary.

In the advertisement, McCain addressed voters about his Republican opponent, saying, "his ads twist the truth like Clinton. We're all pretty tired of that."

Schnur said that the segments, though quickly withdrawn by the campaign, did significant damage, disillusioning voters who thought McCain was "different from the others."

Schnur added that the advertisements also raised questions about McCain's promise to conduct a clean, positive presidential campaign.

"These ads ran contrary to everything we were trying to do," he said.

The Bush campaign seized on the ads, running several commercials of their own which questioned McCain's judgment in producing them.

The second big mistake, according to Schnur, was the authorization of phone calls to Catholic voters in Michigan prior to the primary in that state, reminding them of Bush's visit to Bob Jones University.

Several university officials, including the son of its founder, had in years past made derogatory statements toward Catholicism and the Pope.

After the visit, McCain's campaign paid an organization to make "Catholic Voter Alert" calls to Michigan voters. The calls, which were targeted at Catholics, did not include mention of the McCain campaign's sponsorship.

"This allowed Bush to turn questions about [the Bob Jones incident] from himself to our own campaign tactics," said Schnur.

"Even worse, we lied about it too," Schnur said, referring to how the campaign at first denied knowing about the calls. "It really hurt our credibility."

The third major mistake, according to Schnur, was McCain's criticism of

the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev.Pat Robertson.

In a speech delivered in Robertson's hometown of Virginia Beach just a day before the Virginia primaries, McCain called Falwell and Robertson "agents of intolerance," saying that he hoped the Republican Party would not follow their lead.

The statements were construed by many voters to be an attack on evangelical Christians, rather than just Robertson and Falwell, Schnur said.

"It was too nuanced of a message [for the day before the primary]," Schnur added.

Summing up the campaign, he said most of the mistakes were made as McCain's message gathered momentum.

"For ten months, we ran as near a perfect campaign as we could have...but in seven days, we melted down," Shnur said.

Schnur also took time yesterday to explain why he believes McCain appealed to voters.

He said that during the time when every candidate--Democratic and Republican--was trying to paint him or herself as the "Anti-Clinton," McCain "believed himself not only opposite of the incumbent president, but to the entire system of which the President is just a representative."

"[He was] the anti-everyone," Schnur said of McCain. "But I never was behind it until it actually started to happen."

Schnur emphasized that it was when McCain departed from this ideology--when he became "just another politician" --that the campaign was irrevocably damaged.

"All the other times we were writing a new set of rules for politics," Shnur said. "When we lapsed into a conventional campaign...that's what cost him the nomination."