When You Wish Upon a War . . .

. . . you should be careful what you wish for. Which in the case of John McCain is having a war rain on your run for the Republican presidential roses.

I cannot recall a White House wannabe since Michael Dukakis in 1988 who has fallen so far in my estimation and that of many potential voters than the diss-honorable senator from Arizona, who conceivably could have gotten my vote.

That is if the presidential election had been held in November 2006 and John Kerry was running again.

But McCain has worked hard to betray his purposely vague "values," including a whistle stop tour in which he kissed every right-wing Republican ass of consequence below the Mason-Dixon Line, all the while hitching his star to a war that he, of all of the candidates, should know is unwinnable.

It did not help that his shrinking conservative constituency was not enamored of reports that he considered defecting from the Republican Party.

But it really has been all downhill since he made a fool of himself in April in the most heavily armed photo op in presidential campaign history, a sublimely silly moment befitting Dukakis, who was widely ridiculed after striking an I'm In Charge pose in an M1 Abrams tank.

A word of advice to Mitt Romney, another Republican wannabe: Avoid photo ops with dogs and station wagons.