Does Kerry Have A Voice In His Own Message?

Though entirely discredited, CBS has released an article that grabs my attention.

Coelho, a former congressman who served as House majority whip for the Democrats from 1987 to 1989 … (said) “Our problem here is a national message… What is it that we [Democrats] are? If you go to Kerry, that’s a disaster because the candidate should not be involved in solving disputes or the creation of his message.

First off, I love the term “House majority whip”. Second, there is a single sentence which may explain all the problems Kerry has been facing. Let me provide the line for you to read it again, “The candidate should not be involved in solving disputes or the creation of his message.”
The Kerry campaign is crafting Kerry’s ‘message’, without Kerry’s input! No wonder he can’t shut up about Vietnam or say what he would actually do if he were elected!

Now, let me add another quote that might help illustrate parts of my point:

“If [Sasso] is in charge then Goddammit, say it and stop having the speculation of who's in charge because that’s worse,” Coelho says. “It also starts to impact in regard to the whole image of leadership. If someone can’t control a message in a presidential campaign, how are you going to be a good president?”

(underlining done by me)

The problem with this segment is, Kerry’s advisors don’t even want his input on his own message. I’ll let someone else ask the good question, “if Kerry isn’t the ‘someone’ in this quote, who is?” (well, I’ve already asked the question, I just want to focus on other things). The Kerry campaign advisors have the view that their job is only to get someone elected. To them, it doesn’t matter how he’s elected, or what got him elected, they only care about whether or not he gets elected.

I may be entirely wrong - because I have no experience in, and relatively little knowledge of, presidential campaigns – but I do think that the candidate should create his own message.
Armed with that opinion, I am wondering if Kerry would do better by firing all of his top campaign advisors and administrators (or, at least the ones who think Kerry shouldn’t make his own message), and replacing them with rational people. Obviously, it would create horrendous doubt about his leadership, and not having a campaign (even for a short time) has its own problems, but Kerry can’t win if he doesn’t say what he thinks.

Is this actually the problem of the Kerry campaign? If it is, piling on more advisors will only create more deadlock, in which case Kerry is doomed. I’ve already said that Kerry is not exercising control over his campaign when I discussed the support bases of each candidate, but I didn’t think that Kerry’s campaign itself was beyond his control.

Because my source is CBS, I am trying to verify these quotes, but they seem to explain so much, despite the unlikeliest that Kerry has no control over his message or campaign. What is to become of this if CBS partially redeemed itself with these quotes? Perhaps it may finally prove that voters want a politician who says what he thinks, and political campaigns can not compensate for a terrible candidate. Perhaps I’m being too optimistic with that previous sentence, but optimism has its benefits.