WASHINGTON - Facing a deft assault by Democrats and widescale rejection by voters, John McCain and Sarah Palin are circling the wagons and firing inwards at each other with just nine days until the presidential election.
The tattered remains of their ticket were everywhere Sunday, with both McCain and Palin insiders publicly on the attack to hold the other side responsible for their candidate's woes on the campaign trail.
"She is a diva -- she takes no advice from anyone," an unnamed McCain adviser told CNN over the weekend.
"She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else ... also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."
Those close to Palin, however, say she has simply tried to break free of a McCain campaign that terribly mishandled her, making her the butt of international jokes in the process.
"The campaign as a whole bought completely into what the Washington media said -- that she's completely inexperienced," a close Palin ally told the Politico website.
"Her strategy was to be trustworthy and a team player during the convention and thereafter, but she felt completely mismanaged and mishandled and ill-advised. Recently, she's gone from relying on McCain advisers who were assigned to her to relying on her own instincts."
Palin is apparently most miffed at McCain advisers Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt.
It was their decision to limit Palin's media contact to interviews with ABC's Charlie Gibson and a series of chats with CBS's Katie Couric parcelled out over several cringe-worthy days. They proved to be disastrous for both the Alaska governor personally and McCain's campaign.
Wallace sent an emailed response to several news organizations over the weekend: "If people want to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most honourable thing to do is to lie there," she wrote.
In recent weeks, Palin has publicly parted ways with the McCain campaign on various fronts, leading many to speculate she is attempting to distinguish herself from the flailing Arizona senator and forge her own identity in preparation for a run for the White House in 2012.
Among them:
- She wondered in an interview with the New York Times why McCain had deemed off-limits Obama's association with his onetime pastor, the incendiary Rev. Jeremiah Wright;
- She questioned the use of so-called robocalls by the campaign, calling them annoying;
- She disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of the state of Michigan.
These and other departures from the campaign's positions have prompted one McCain insider to suggest Palin is "going rogue."
One political observer says it's no wonder.
"She should sue them for malpractice," said Sam Popkin, author of "The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns."
"They chose her because they needed some energy, they needed a personality, and they turned that personality into an idiot due to their hurried, ad hoc choice of her and their subsequent cluelessness on how to handle her."
The McCain campaign should have figured out who they wanted as their vice-presidential candidate weeks earlier and begun preparing that person for the spotlight long before they announced it, said Popkin, who teaches political science at the University of Southern California.
"No one could have handled that kind of international attention without any preparation whatsoever."
But others say many of Palin's unexpected shortcomings forced the McCain campaign to keep her out of the media spotlight.
"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," another McCain source told CNN. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."
Recent polls suggest Palin has been a significant drag on the Republican ticket despite being popular among the party's core supporters, with most of those surveyed saying they have no confidence she has the qualifications to be vice-president.
She's also been dogged with scandal since joining the ticket. She was found guilty of abusing her power as governor in the so-called "Troopergate" scandal over the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, and is now facing another probe over whether she violated ethics rules in the affair.
Last week, there was more controversy when it was revealed $150,000 had been spent on clothes for Palin, a self-styled down-home "hockey mom," since late August.
