A Five-Cent Psychoanalysis of John McCain

"Somebody asked, 'What’s the strategy behind this?'" said Charlie Black of John McCain's peculiar foreign travels in the midst of his unmistakable domestic meltdown. "It’s simple," answered Black. "McCain says he wants to go to these places, and we say, of course."

There are some politicians whom advisers should never permit to run their own campaigns, and John McCain is one of them. Watching him, I get the sense, at times, that he still sees himself as the macho, hotshot naval cadet whose picaresque adventures install him as the truest man among men, which voters are bound to see, acknowledge and swoon over.

So off he goes to exotic destinations, like steamy Colombia, while he's melting in Michigan. It's more than unorthodox; it's bizarre. But up till now he's been in personal command of his own little squadron, brooking no insubordination or common sense from mere professional advisers. Hence Charlie Black's comment, "We say, of course."

Up till now, that is. For Mr. McCain has finally (but tentatively?) bitten the bullet of reality -- the one with his name all over it, announcing with increasing velocity and lethality: You ... don't ... know ... what ... the ... hell ... you're ... doing. Get a grip, and put in charge of your operations a mad-dog Beelzebub with extraordinary organizational and propagandistic skills, which McCain has now done in the person of Karl Rove-acolyte Steve Schmidt.

"Aggressive" is the understated adjective most commonly seen in connection with Mr. Schmidt's name, and aggressive he'll no doubt remain. He's not new to the McCain campaign -- he's been there all along, more in the shadows, taking notes -- but now, having edged out in power the campaign's manager, he's loaded for bear as top gun.

In fact, when Schmidt worked for George Bush's 2004 reelection campaign his nickname was "The Bullet" -- "a reference," noted the NY Times, "to the shape of his shaved head" -- but that metaphor is about to undergo a trifle and more realistic transition.

Which is to say, Barack Obama is about to find himself in a line of direct and withering fire.

There has always been, and so it remains, only one slim way in which McCain can control his destiny and thereby win this thing: to blast away at Obama with unremitting assaults on his character, his inexperience and his "liberalism" (in anticipation of which, of course, the Obama campaign has already launched a concerted flanking maneuver to the center-right).

But above all, the McCain campaign must blast -- blast anything and everything, go as negative as the almost limitless boundaries of poor taste can take it.

Yet, there may be a problem with this Rove-Schmidtian strategy.

Buried, I sense as well, in McCain's macho-cadet code of manliness is the nagging political anachronism of personal honor: that is, a few hijinks are OK, but a sustained campaign of outright dishonesty -- the very species of fraudulence deployed against him by Bush in 2000 -- is for McCain, perhaps, beyond the pale.

Indeed, McCain may ultimately wish -- even if this hasn't yet risen to a comprehensible level within his consciousness -- to be largely remembered as that candidate who really did prefer being right (as he sees it) to being president at any cost.

Because, I further sense, even deeper in McCain's psyche is the emotional undercurrent of recognition that he has already lost. So why not go down with a little honor intact?

I apologize for the armchair psychoanalysis, but its results, at times, do appear undeniable.

Just look at McCain; watch him, on the stump, and you see a man almost clinically depressed and already defeated. His performance is so unstintingly morbid, it's as though he just wants to get the inevitable over with.

And if I'm correct, Steve Schmidt is about to encounter a lot of internal flak, guaranteeing yet more campaign confusion, if not more rearrangement of the deck chairs.