War room chief or top campaign strategist

Steve Schmidt, the aide brought in over the summer who is the effective McCain campaign manager, has two main election credentials in his biography. He ran Schwarzenegger's reelection campaign in 2006, but, previous to that, he had only one bit of national campaign experience, he ran the Bush "war room" rapid response group in 2004.

As I hear people talking about the McCain campaign's absolute insistence on winning daily news cycles, and the sometimes shortsightedness of the wildly swinging campaign tactics, I can't help but think how much that sounds like the output of a "rapid response" team and not a campaign strategist.

Is Schmidt running the campaign like a "war room?" Is the "war room" mentality why the McCain campaign spent all their attacking credibility in August? Is that why the campaign has frequently lacked (or failed to stick to) any broad overarching campaign themes? Is that why we're seeing so many narrative "stunts"?

Is the McCain campaign paying now for the short term "win the day" daily strategies of the summer?

(Add this LATimes story on Schmidt (with the detail that it was Schmidt alone who is pretty much responsible for the Palin pick.)

And the much discussed J Heilemann piece, "How McCain Lost His Brand." (It's worth a read.))

Just a theory I've been bumping around.