How McCain lost: Lack of message, funding

PHOENIX -- In the end, Republican John McCain could not pilot his campaign through some of the stormiest skies ever faced by a presidential candidate.

A global financial crisis and President Bush's unpopularity created a bad environment for any Republican candidate, campaign aides and analysts say, but McCain also created some of his own problems in his loss to Democrat Barack Obama.

Among them: McCain's late-September decision to "suspend" his campaign in light of the economic crisis did not seem to impress voters. Republicans also are debating the wisdom of McCain's other key decision, the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Beyond that, critics say, McCain struggled to find a compelling message, lurching from slogan to slogan.

"He consistently ran the wrong message," says pollster Frank Luntz, citing McCain's periodic advocacy of a new global-warming policy as an example. "People aren't afraid of the ice caps melting when their 401(k)s are melting."

A campaign that McCain, a former Navy pilot, had hoped to wage on national security instead turned on financial issues — and Democrats made sure voters heard his 2007 comment that "the issue of economics is something that I've really never understood as well as I should."

Besides the economy, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis cited another financial hurdle: Obama's campaign budget, which reached $640 million as of Oct. 15. That allowed Obama to stretch the electoral map and advertise in traditional Republican strongholds — including Virginia and Indiana, where Obama prevailed on Election Day.

McCain didn't have that luxury, and his efforts to invade Democratic territory fell flat. The campaign pulled out of Michigan in early October.

It devoted millions of dollars to Pennsylvania, seeing an opportunity because of Hillary Rodham Clinton's decisive victory there in the Democratic primary, Davis says. Yet polls showed McCain way behind, and he lost the state to Obama.

"It was a daunting task to start with," McCain senior aide Mark Salter says of the campaign's uphill climb. "And it was more daunting every day."