Here's the thing: Barack Obama is having a good time out there on the stump. So is Michelle. (Cue fist bump.) And when Joe Biden's got a podium and a microphone, he's the happiest man on earth.
Any other Republican (the "Generic Republican Man" for whom the VP Speech was originally written last night?) ought to be pretty happy today, too. After all, the media loved last night's blood-and-guts show, and the base is fired up.
But as he prepares for his big moment in the spotlight tonight, I can't imagine the Original Maverick is feeling very good today. And I think the bizarre interview he gave to Time last week offers some insight as to why.
Time called the session "prickly," but that's not what I hear. No, this is a man who now finds himself and his campaign being controlled by people he's always disliked and a branch of the party that never liked him.
Hell, if everyone at the convention can keep reminding me that McCain was a POW, I think I can safely say that this sounds like an interview with a guy who has a gun to his head:
In 2000, after the primaries, you went back to South Carolina to talk about what you felt was a mistake you had made on the Confederate flag. Is there anything so far about this campaign that you wish you could take back or you might revisit when it's over?
[Does not answer.]
Do I know you? [Says with a laugh.]
[Long pause.] I'm very happy with the way our campaign has been conducted, and I am very pleased and humbled to have the nomination of the Republican Party.
You do acknowledge there was a change in the campaign, in the way you had run the campaign?
[Shakes his head.]
You don't acknowledge that? O.K., when your aides came to you and you decided, having been attacked by Barack Obama, to run some of those ads, was there a debate?
The campaign responded as planned.
This is not a candidate who's happy to be where he is, it's not a candidate, as we know, who's happy with the VP he ended up with, and last night did not help matters at all.
We all agree by now that last night's trifecta of Huckabee, Giuliani and Palin was one long dogwhistle to what's left of the GOP base. By all evidence, it worked. Good for them.
Most of us looked at Sarah Palin on stage last night and saw Caribou Barbie speaking words written by someone else in the voice of Sheriff Gunderson from Fargo. The base, judging from the plaudits she received over at NRO and Redstate, saw Ronald Reagan speaking in the voice of...um, a female Ronald Reagan?
But Sarah Palin, at least, was apparently born to read someone else's words. That's not how John McCain sees himself, and that Time interview is the clearest sign we've had yet of just how uncomfortable he is in the role in which he's now being cast.
So where does he go tonight?
If he tacks to the center, where he at least has the chance to come off looking comfortable in his own skin and maybe even happy to be there, he loses the full-throated bloodlust roar of the base that we heard last night. (And make no mistake about it - that roar fed the immediate post-speech media narrative in which "she hit it out of the park," if we believe Wolf Blitzer.)
If McCain tries to pick up on last night's right-wing energy, he comes off looking insincere and stiff, like an old guy reading somebody else's words. We know McCain doesn't fake happiness very well. We know Americans, all else being equal, will vote for the happy guy - look at JFK, at Reagan, at Bill Clinton.
John McCain has been let down, badly, by the GOP's usually excellent stagecraft. The trains didn't even run on time last night, as we now know. The hall wasn't full. The stage looked ugly. And now, heading for what should be the most triumphant night of his life, he's been boxed into a corner that he'll have an awfully hard time getting out of.
I'd be pissed, too, if I were John McCain.