I had never met Steve Schmidt and only knew him through the media. When I found myself seated at the former McCain campaign manager's table at a Washington dinner hosted by The Week magazine, it was like a flashback to the 2008 campaign. Schmidt is instantly recognizable with his trademark shaved head, his bulldog physique, and the restless intensity that marks him as a political operative of the first order. He had spent 10 weeks trying to mold Sarah Palin into a plausible national candidate, and when the campaign ended, he assessed her shortcomings, as she did his, in what...