Most of the attention is focused on tonight's vice presidential debate, which is shaping up to be the anticlimactic event of the campaign season. This is because it will take a performance even sorrier than those Sarah Palin already has delivered for her to "lose" to Joe Biden, while anything less than rampant incoherence will be spun as a "big win."
While I will have one eye on the debate and another on the National League Division Series, my heart will be with the unlikely sob sister of this presidential season. No, not Palin. Or Hillary Clinton. I'm talking about John McCain.
McCain has long been known for profanity-laced outbursts and a "Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran" belligerence that is never far from the surface. But he has acted erratically from the outset of the campaign, and his swings from churlish to childish and sarcastic to angry are by now de rigeur. (If you don't know what that means, it's French for "an integral part of his shtick.")
McCain's swooning fits not only belie his Navy pilot tough-guy image, but call into question his emotional maturity.
If these cases of the masculine vapors are orchestrated, then further shame on he and his handlers for running a campaign based solely on . . . um, tactics. These tactics include his repeated inveigling against the news media when they don't hew to his script or when he is called a liar. And most recently siccing his surrogates on the vice presidential debate moderator because she has written a book about the latest generation of black politicians, or because she and Barack Obama share the same skin color, or . . . what the heck are they trying to imply?
But nowhere has McCain seemed more at sea than on the biggest issue confronting Americans -- the beleaguered economy.
From his initial proclamation that the economy's "fundamentals are sound" to his statement that financial markets don't need more regulatory oversight to his statement that markets do need more regulatory oversight, he has been a man less in control of himself than a man who is struggling to keep up with the real world but keeps falling behind.
Lacking any real substance, McCain has repeatedly defaulted to political wand waving, notably his dramatic but stunningly ham-handed decision last week to "suspend" campaigning and race to Washington to bail out the Wall Street bailout, a ploy as transparently phony as a teenager having a hissy fit when grounded by a parent.
And what's with McCain refusing to even look at Obama during their first debate? Or when Obama crossed over the aisle to the Republican side of the Senate chamber last night, stretched out his arm and offered his hand to McCain, who shook it but flashed an unmistakable "go away" look? (Incidentally, after making a huge deal about the bailout vote last week, McCain could barely utter a coherent thought, while he was struck deaf and dumb when his turn came to speak before the Senate vote.)
Obama, on the other hand, is invariably Mister Cool, so much so that his restraint sometimes seems a little creepy in contrast to McCain's mood swings.
Even with Palin's Alaska-sized negatives, it is McCain who seems a bigger drag on the ticket. His overall poll numbers are looking worse by the day, including those in make-or-break Florida, while the fine print in these polls reveals that a goodly number of voters have trust issues with him, and surely some are put off by his crazy uncle affectations.
With less than five weeks to go and the first signs that Obama may be poised for a blowout, McCain has painted himself into a very tight corner -- or alternately is so addled that he has unwittingly allowed his Cue Card Squad to do that. In any event, if his campaign continues to head south, it is a sure thing that he will resort to that old sob-sister standby: Hysteria.
Image: William Blake's "Pity" (1825)
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