The Wheels on the Bus…

With the departure of his campaign manager Terry Nelson, and another high level political advisor, and with coffers drying up, is John McCain’s struggling presidential bid periously close to collapsing?

The Arizona senator has experienced a steady erosion in the polls since January this year, and as Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen note, his bid for the GOP nod this go-round is absent the exuberance that characterized the heady days of 2000, when the Straight Talk Express rolled into the Granite State and the outspoken maverick charmed the media and enough voters to propel him past a certian Texas governor.

Now the wheels seem to be coming off the Straight Talk Express.

The BBC’s Matt Frei attributes the erstwhile front-runner’s flagging fortunes to his loyalty to the Bush administration — especially on Iraq and immigration. The former remains unpopular with a large chunk of independent voters, a group key to the 2000 New Hampshire victory. And McCain’s vote for the contentious immigration reform bill is not winning him many friends among rank and file conservatives.

But as Martin and Allen further point out, there are also factors beyond the merely political that help explain the implosion of the campaign:

“McCain was in trouble even within the walls of his campaign headquarters, where personal rivalries, poor planning and excessive spending gave him little chance to defeat his external demons.”

McCain’s predicament has invited comparisons to John Kerry when the Democratic presidential contender fired his campaign manager and others in response to a surging Howard Dean. Kerry was then able to retool his sputtering campaign and went on to best the former Vermont governor in both New Hampshire and Iowa.

Unlike Kerry, the Republican candidate is near broke, but as columnist Robert Novak observes, the theoretical possibility of a similar reversal of political fortunes gives a sliver of hope to die-hard McCainites. Moreover, Novak says Rick Davis, who helmed McCain’s 2000 effort, is just such the man to run a leaner and potentially more effective campaign:

“McCain’s slimmed-down campaign will concentrate on early contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Davis is far more adept than Weaver at singing McCain’s praises. McCain supporters hope his eloquent support for the Iraq intervention will earn him backing from the Republican base.”