"Going into the debates, an adviser expressed that very concern [McCain would let his indignation show] to me: 'If he keeps the debates on substance, he's very good. If it moves to the personal, then I think it's a disaster.' Accordingly, [senior adviser Mark] Salter advised McCain before the first debate to maintain, one person privy to the sessions put it, 'a very generous patience with Obama -- in terms of, 'I'm sure if he understood...' '

" 'The object wasn't to appear condescending at all -- really, the opposite,' an adviser said of Salter's tactic, which judging by the postdebate polls seemed to backfire. 'You put a bullet in a gun, figuring it'll get shot once. We had no idea it would be shot 10 times.' "

-- New York Times Magazine writer Robert Draper in a riveting expose of the McCain campaign's losing strategies: "The Making (and Remaking) of McCain".