McCain turns campaign over to Bush Flunkies

McCain and Palin, who have lauded themselves as mavericks and agents of change, have abdicated the running of their campaign to Bush operatives. The new McCain campaign team is lead by Steve Schmidt, who advised Bush during his 2004 campaign. Schmidt has assembled a campaign team whose members are deeply entrenched in the Bush Administration.

The team includes: Mark Wallace, a Bush appointee to the United Nations; Tucker Eskew, who ran strategic communications for the Bush White House; Greg Jenkins, deputy assistant to Bush in his first term and executive director of the 2004 inauguration; Nicole Wallace, communications director at the White House and senior-level communications adviser to McCain and Palin; Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former chief economist for Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, is now McCain's domestic policy adviser; and Bush speechwriter, Matthew Scully wrote Palin's convention speech.

The McCain campaign's new Bush-era advisers have rarely left Sarah Palin's side. When she returned to Alaska for the first time since becoming the VP nominee, at least half a dozen advisers went with her to conduct briefings, manage her interview with Charlie Gibson and prep her for the VP debate on Oct. 2.

The Bush team has been able to resurrect McCain's stagnent campaign by using the same low-brow tactics that kept Bush afloat. But their mere involvement points to McCain's weakness and inability to manage his own affairs. It also seems to prove the theory that McCain will be an extensive of the Bush years.