Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — When Gov. Sarah Palin flew home to Alaska for the first time since being named the Republican vice presidential nominee, she took along at least half a dozen new advisers to conduct briefings, stage-manage her first television interview and help her prepare for a critical debate next month.
And virtually every member of the team shared a common credential: years of service to President Bush.
From Mark Wallace, a Bush appointee to the United Nations, to Tucker Eskew, who ran strategic communications for the Bush White House, to Greg Jenkins, who served as the deputy assistant to Bush in his first term and was executive director of the 2004 inauguration, Palin was surrounded on the trip home by operatives deeply rooted in the Bush administration.
The clutch of Bush veterans helping to coach Palin reflects a larger reality about Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign: Far from being a group of outsiders to the Republican Party power structure, it is now run largely by skilled operatives who learned their crafts in successive Bush campaigns and various jobs across the Bush government over the past eight years.
The team has been assembled and led by Steve Schmidt, a sharp-witted, low-key strategist who has emerged as the campaign’s day-to-day operations chief after the ouster of a group of sometimes undisciplined McCain loyalists. Schmidt’s operation is tightly run and hard-nosed — made up of policy advisers, communications experts, advance people and lower-level aides, many of them old friends who have worked together for the last eight years, and whose presence lends a familiar vibe to the Palin operation.
Republicans have been heartened by the effectiveness of the new McCain organization, which has helped put McCain back in serious contention for the White House, causing restlessness among Democrats who believed the race was Sen. Barack Obama’s to lose. Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, expressed pride at what her former colleagues have been able to accomplish.
“We had a great team — they’re the best in the business,” she said.