In the wild ride that is the McCain presidential campaign, Steve Schmidt has been at the wheel, steering -- some say careering -- from Paris Hilton to Sarah Palin, from abrupt "suspension" to abrupt restart.
Schmidt is McCain's day-to-day operations boss.
Retained in a summer shake-up intended to right McCain's faltering campaign, Schmidt, 38, quickly put his stamp on the operation, aggressively attacking Democratic nominee Barack Obama, often with biting ridicule, and vying to dominate every day's news cycle.
It's an approach that would be familiar to Californians. Schmidt managed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's reelection campaign two years ago.
But pundits and Republicans have been left confused, particularly after McCain, in a head-spinning 72-hour period, canceled campaign appearances to work on the Wall Street bailout plan, tried to postpone the first presidential debate, and then showed up after all.
Schmidt tends to shrug off the criticism. When two high-profile Republicans, unaware their microphones were hot, disparaged Palin, the governor of Alaska and McCain's running mate, on national cable television last month, Schmidt offered a two-word reaction: "Who cares?"
For a time, Schmidt's tactics seemed to work. Team McCain was practicing a political jujitsu that kept the Republican close in polls when the Democratic standard-bearer, given George Bush's unpopularity, should have had a significant lead.
The effort peaked with the choice of Palin as McCain's running mate. Convinced that McCain needed a dramatic gesture to make the race competitive, Schmidt pressed McCain to pluck the Alaska governor from obscurity.
Other than the candidates, no one in the operation has more riding on that decision than Schmidt. And no one has worked harder to turn the decision into a success.
He defended Palin against what he called sexist attacks, and traveled to Alaska to brief her before her first TV interviews. For three days, he was ensconced at McCain's spread in Sedona, Ariz., helping Palin prepare for her performance on the biggest night of her career: the debate against Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden.
But a month from election day, Schmidt faces his most difficult professional challenge. McCain has dropped in polls as Washington struggled to find a solution to a reeling Wall Street. Polls show voters trust Obama more than McCain to fix the economy.
