A hugely unpopular outgoing Republican president; an inspirational opponent with almost unlimited campaign funds; the killer blow of a once-in-a-lifetime global financial meltdown.

Any one of those factors on its own would have left John McCain's White House bid facing a serious hurdle; taken together they left the Arizona senator's campaign with an Everest-sized mountain to climb.

"We did our absolute best in this campaign in really difficult circumstances," McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt acknowledged in comments to reporters before the outcome of Tuesday's election was known.

"From a political climate point of view it is highly doubtful that anyone will have to run in a worse political climate than the one John McCain had to run in this year," Schmidt said.

The decisive blow

The financial crisis had been decisive, wiping out the feel-good factor after the Republican convention in early September when the introduction of Sarah Palin to the race had helped McCain into a narrow lead in polls.

"The global economic collapse in September when we were ahead in the race. It was very difficult, it was a bad economic environment throughout the election where people were angry at the incoming party," Schmidt said.

"The president's approval numbers were not helpful. But the party as a whole is unpopular with the American people and that was a big albatross."

Formulating an appropriate reaction to the carnage on Wall Street proved to be devilishly difficult, other aides said.

McCain faced the choice of being slammed if he did nothing to help address the turmoil or risked being seen as ineffective if he attempted to broker a solution that proved unsuccessful.

Other aides say that the campaign suffered when Republican lawmakers voted against passing the Bush administration's bailout package

"That was awful," one campaign staffer told AFP. "Absolutely awful. They were willing to dump the bill and hurt the Republican candidate because something (House Speaker) Pelosi said hurt their feelings? Come on."

'Obama's a much better candidate'

Senior McCain advisor Mark Salter meanwhile said the Republican political machine had been unable to sow doubts about Obama in the same way that it did against 2000 and 2004 Democratic candidates Al Gore and John Kerry.

The reason was simple: Obama's charisma, and formidable fundraising which had allowed him to outspend McCain by roughly four to one.

"Obama's a much better candidate. And Obama has more money than anyone's ever had running for president," Salter said.

"They've run a very disciplined professional campaign. They've been very disciplined and every decision they've taken has been what serves their candidate's best interests."

Climate of discontent

Communications chief Nicolle Wallace, one of the officials reportedly involved in infighting with Palin's staff in the final weeks of the campaign, said the 2008 White House race had begun in the 2006 mid-term elections.

Republican support had wilted she said "under the weight of corruption, mismanagement, and what the public started to view as a crushing confluence of Republican incompetence and Republican greed."

"I think that the discontent that the electorate felt in 2006 continued this year," Wallace said.

Wallace, communications director in President George W. Bush's successful re-election in 2004, agreed with Schmidt that the combination of the economy and unpopularity of Bush and the Republicans had proved devastating.

"This is the only campaign I've worked on where the events that you face and the climate in which you do it have been so crushingly stacked against a nominee," Wallace told AFP.

Like other officials, Wallace believed that only McCain's reputation as a maverick and proven track record had allowed the Republicans to remain competitive. "I don't think any Republican nominee other than John McCain could have come so far," she said.

AFP