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The reason John McCain lost the presidency is because he and his campaign mismanaged a basic rule that he, above all men, with his life history should have understood: in the war of armies it is kill or be killed; in political war it is define or die.
McCain, a brave former POW and an experienced senator, might have turned his situation around had he applied this rule to what I tell my political clients are the five options in political debate: attack, counterattack, ignore, defend and sell.

From the beginning of his campaign for president, Barack Obama defined himself as a unique agent of change and in attacking and counterattacking he used President Bush in a classic guilt by association political definition. The weekend before Election Day, Obama’s closing attack against McCain was, “After 21 months and three debates, Senator McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he’d do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy.”
In effect, Obama very early on defined President Bush as McCain’s running mate—way before McCain picked Sarah Palin for that position. But it wasn’t until McCain’s third debate with Obama on October 15 that McCain finally counterattacked Obama with this obvious retort: “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I’m going to give a new direction to this economy in this country.”
There is a Persian proverb: “A stone thrown at the right time is better than gold given at the wrong time.” McCain’s line was pure gold; but unfortunately it was a stone thrown at a time when Obama had so thoroughly defined himself and when the country was so thoroughly disgusted by the reeling economy that the attack—while great—didn’t have a disabling enough effect on the Obama Express.
John McCain’s political hero, Theodore Roosevelt said, “Nine tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.” Whether it was this attack or several others McCain launched during his campaign, McCain’s wisdom often came too late. He only seemed to gel his message against Obama and warm to it in the closing part of the campaign. Earlier he kept switching from attack narrative to attack narrative, as if searching—desperately it seemed—for a way to throw Obama off balance.
But the way to have thrown Obama off balance existed almost from the start of the general election. McCain needed to “pull an Obama” on Obama. Just as Obama had gotten on his high horse in April to renounce his mentor, the controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright, McCain should have issued a dramatic challenge to Obama later in the spring, saying something like this: “Senator Obama, if you consider it unfair to link you to Jeremiah Wright then you will agree that it is unfair of you to link me to George Bush. Let’s go man to man in this campaign.” But McCain unilaterally disarmed. He wouldn’t bring up the Wright connection with Obama.
This failure to cut off Obama’s attack premise from the outset of the general election put McCain in the worst of the debate options: the “defend” mode. McCain remained stuck protesting that he was independent from Bush. Fine. But this was defense, not offense. It reminded me of defining yourself with a negative, as when former president Richard Nixon said, “I am not a crook.”
McCain also got tangled up by a few more rules I invoke with my clients. The first is, “Never let your opponent run in the clear, unless he or she is hurting himself or herself rather than hurting you.” The second rule is from former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who defined the secret of success as “constancy to purpose.”
Barack Obama is president-elect because, with unrelenting discipline, he applied those two rules, letting McCain get twisted up in knots over an economic bailout legislative package and maintaining his “constancy to purpose” in defining McCain as President Bush’s political twin brother (even if this was untrue).
Obama also bested McCain in skillfully applying the better options of attack, counterattack and sell. Obama only rarely seemed to defend and he cagily knew when to “ignore,” such as when he saw McCain and the media eventually pull back from the Jeremiah Wright controversy or when he ignored by brushing aside his broken pledge to confine himself to public financing in the general election, a straightjacket that McCain wrapped himself in.
But, most of all, Obama defined his campaign strategy and message and he sold it—consistently, calmly and coolly. He tapped into the public’s dissatisfaction with the Bush years and satisfied enough voters that in comparison to McCain he was sufficiently up to the job, more right for the job and likable enough to be commander-in-chief.
In the end, Senator McCain couldn’t close the sale because he never convincingly made the sale, which we will explain further in part two of this series.

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Why McCain Lost, But Didn’t Have To

I can't wait for part II. Because until now I have nothing read that should convince me that McCain didn't "have to" lose. As if "have to" is even relevant.

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The Media; that's why McCain lost.