Country First - General Election Campaign 2008 - Aftermath

Aftermath

In the wake of the election results, anonymous members of McCain's staff reportedly criticized Palin and her campaign staff's conduct of the campaign. Some of the criticisms were later attributed erroneously to staff at a non-existent think-tank as part of the Martin Eisenstadt hoax.

By a month later, McCain demurred from putting too much stress on the effect the economic crisis had had on his chance to win the presidency: "That would sound like I am detracting from President-elect Obama's campaign. I don't want to do that... Nobody likes a sore loser." McCain said, "I spent a period of time feeling sorry for myself. It's wonderful. It's one of the most enjoyable experiences that you can have. But the point is: You've got to move on ... I'm still a senator from the state of Arizona. I still have the privilege and honor of serving this country, which I've done all my life, and it's a great honor to do so."

In campaign post-mortems, top McCain staffers conceded that the Palin rollout to the national media had not gone well. But they generally defended the decision to pick Palin, because the other "game changing" choice of Joe Lieberman would have been politically unacceptable to conservative Republicans at the convention and because there were not many good alternatives available. Regarding McCain having barred using the Jeremiah Wright controversy in ads against Obama, McCain's pollsters said it was the right decision both on the merits and on the politics. McCain himself also defended both the Palin pick and the decision not to attack on the Wright controversy. The staffers agreed that McCain's remark that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong" at the beginning of the financial crisis had been a blunder, and said that the subsequent suspension of the campaign was an attempt to recover from the remark but had led to charges that McCain was erratic.

Overall, a deputy campaign manager said, "We could spend talking about the strategy of the McCain campaign because we had so many of them." When the campaign's chief pollster was asked if they could have pulled out the election if they had only had some more time, he responded "No—we lost. We were happy it was over."

A year after the election, there was still ongoing feuding between the McCain and Palin camps over the conduct of the campaign, culminating with the November 2009 publication of Palin's memoir Going Rogue: An American Life. Palin criticized McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt heavily, and contended that the McCain campaign had mismanaged her media appearances. Schmidt replied that Palin's telling was "all fiction", and prior McCain strategist John Weaver denounced Palin for "petty and pathetic" attempts to get even. McCain himself simply said that he had read the book, was still very good friends with Palin, and stated: "Look, I’m just moving on. I’m just moving on, and I’ve got too many other things to worry about except to say that I’m proud of my campaign." McCain told his staff repeatedly, "Don't look back in anger."