Mr. McCain is known to sign off on big campaign decisions and then to march off his own reservation. Two weeks ago, he publicly disagreed with his own spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, after she used a line of attack against Senator Barack Obama that he had approved after careful strategizing within his campaign. Ms. Hazelbaker raced out of the Virginia campaign headquarters and refused to take Mr. McCain’s calls of apology, aides said, and a plan to have Republican members of Congress use the same critical line about Mr. Obama’s foreign trip fell apart… In recent weeks, Mr. Murphy and another former top aide, John Weaver, were critical of Mr. McCain’s advertisements attacking Mr. Obama. The two men privately urged Mr. Schmidt and Charlie Black, a senior adviser, to get off that course and spend as much time building up Mr. McCain as tearing down Mr. Obama, advice also offered by a member of Mr. McCain’s panel of outside advertising consultants, Alex Castellanos. They met stiff, angry resistance, several people familiar with the episode said.