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The GOP has historically relied on the president-as-figurehead model of candidacy, where they have this point man who is then fed to the populace and carefully and effectively marketed by their noise machine. The Reagan Model, basically -- it worked very, very well, because Reagan, as an actor, was the perfect reactionary sock puppet. But with George I, an imperfect specimen for that approach, not so good -- didn't have the smoothness for the slick snake oil salesmanship. George II was another solid example of it, although he lacked Reagan's aw shucks affability, was almost too much of a sock puppet to make it work.
Now they're trying it yet again with McCain, but he's just too frayed to make that model work -- it's like you can see the fingers flailing within the sock puppet, and we're all supposed to ignore that and be mesmerized by the puppet's performance, and ignore the gaffes and screwups and just overall lack of any there being there.
It's going to continue to cause McCain all sorts of trouble as the race goes on. Romney would have been a better sock puppet candidate for the GOP, as he's far smoother -- but McCain, no good.
