Why Is John McCain Acting So Desperate?

The desperation of John McCain — ranging from character attacks to outright lies to repeated shifts on the issues — is symptomatic of a candidate scrambling to keep his head above water a few days before an election, not 15 weeks out.

Speaking of 15 weeks, it has been about that long since McCain sewed up the Republican nomination. And yet that all-important turning of the corner — the moment when everything falls into place and a campaign is running on all cylinders — remains elusive. In fact, last week was easily the worst for McCain since his last primary challenger dropped out.

This sad state of affairs is the result of two realities: McCain would be a weak candidate in any election year, but he has been rendered weaker still because of the albatross of George Bush and a cascade of bad news at home and abroad that is beyond his control. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is a strong if not fully rounded candidate who has the wind at his back because that news plays to his advantage. .

McCain’s attempts to put lipstick on his pig of a campaign have been so inadequate that they border on the pathetic, and a consequence has been an inextricable slide into the only alternative he and his advisers believe to be available — Rovian smear politics.

What else to call McCain’s TV ad claiming that Obama “made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops”? The truth, of course, is that the Pentagon would not allow such visits because it viewed them as campaign appearances, while the ad actually shows him meeting with troops. In a gym.

What else to call other swipes saying that Obama would commit treason to win the election? Or linking him to everyone from Hamas to Castro to Ahmadinejad? Or that he is responsible for high gas prices?

As it is, McCain’s extensive media buys have not resulted in even a tiny bump in the polls, which leads me to believe that while many people are not focused on the campaign, those who are have pretty much made up their minds.

When all is said and done, this election is about the future and about change, and McCain fails on both accounts.

McCain’s call for a new round of tax cuts is laughable in the face of a record federal deficit. His cure for America’s energy woes is a regurgitated version of the president’s. His prescription for health-care reform borders on the draconian, while his positions on Iraq and Afghanistan have morphed into pretty fair imitations of Obama’s in key respects.

The election is Obama’s to lose. He still could do so and certainly has a way to go to convince me that he would be a credible president. But while the upstart from Illinois barnstormed Middle Eastern and European capitals looking presidential, the septuagenarian was busily popping sour grapes and acting like a grouchy grandfather who can’t get the grandkids to obey him while his posse of neocon and big-business advisers busily whispered in his ear about what to say and do next.

Saddest of all, he has abandoned any pretense of occupying the high ground with an increasingly dignity-free campaign that is a reminder that a McCain presidency would be the same old same old.