As we approach the final four weeks of campaigning, John McCain is sinking faster than the Titanic. And as his chances of winning decrease with every passing day and poll, the level of negative attacks against Obama have increased exponentially. The events on Wall Street and the subsequent Congressional response have been just two more huge gaps which have opened in the hull of the good ship McCain/Palin.
McCain can lay the greater part of the blame for this disaster directly on his own shoulders. He has done nothing to help his own campaign. Rather his actions and increasingly bizarre statements and behavior have only served to further increase the level of voter unease with his campaign. McCain's self-delusional image of himself as the great Viet Nam air ace who swoops in to save the day is part of the problem itself.
We have also seen a marked increase in the disconsonant nature of his actions and reactions on the campaign trail which have only served to elevate the level of speculation concerning not only his physical but his mental health. Especially with the spectre of a President Sarah Palin floating out there in the mist. And now with almost every poll showing Obama's ascendancy and his own decline, his levels of anger and hostility have become more and more overt. His icy demeanor towards Senator Obama at the first debate where McCain couldn't even bring himself to look at Obama coupled with his haughty dismissal of Obama on the floor of the Senate this week are indicative of McCain's level of absolute frustration.
Bereft of new ideas for the nation on every issue of concern to the average American from the economy to the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, McCain and his campaign are now pinning their last hope on the "pit bull" from Alaska. The neocons and the right-wing fundies were over the moon in their reaction to Palin's "successful" performance at the debate the other night. If that was a success, one can hardly imagine a lower bar ever being set. They took Palin's native ability to regurgitate bits and pieces of divergent data and information as proof that she could stand her ground. But the discordant and irrational stringing together of words and phrases is not the equivalent of rational thought. Far from it. And the resulting polling data proved that the majority of the country weren't fooled.
So now what does McCain have left? His campaign for the presidency has only served to expose the shallowness of the persona he has sought to project over the last twenty-five years or so. Like Palin's sentences, his political history is a mishmash of disjointed and scatter shot attempts at coherence and cohesiveness. McCain is much less than the sum of his parts.
To answer the question posed above, there is only one final thing McCain can do to try to bring down Obama. He must unleash what, in my belief, will be the most negative campaign in recent history. He and his campaign will make the Swift Boat smears against John Kerry look like encomiums of praise compared to what they have in mind. And Sarah Palin, little Miss Butter Wouldn't Melt, you betcha, has been designated the lead mud-slinger, slanderer, defamer, venomous commander-in-chief of this final campaign. And judging by her performance yesterday when she fired the first volley at a campaign rally, she is relishing every moment of it. There is such a look of malevolent glee in her eyes as she attacks Obama, it only reinforces the visceral dislike that so many voters have for her already.
So fasten your seat belts, boys and girls, it's going to be a bumpy ride. But in the end, all that McCain will have succeeded in doing is that along with his crushing defeat at the polls, he will have destroyed forever the McCain myth. Personally, I think they are both excellent outcomes.
Comments are closed on this story.