John McCain's Ballistic Misfire

Sen. McCain, take it from someone who misspent much of his youth in a neighborhood that specialized in unseemly persuasion: When preparing to sucker punch the other guy in the form of a swift kick in the balls, one normally shouldn't telegraph one's intentions.

But that's just what you've done, you hopeless klutz.

Last week McCain unleashed a veritable avalanche of pre-attack intel, complete with the precise timing of his most desperate D-Day. When asked by one of his overeager troops at a town-hall coven, "When are you going to take the gloves off?" the candidate, according to the Washington Post, "grinned and replied, 'How about Tuesday night?'"

And while you were blathering the timing of the larger, imminent offensive, your advisers were blathering its tactical message: "We are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days," crooned one of them to the Post, which, as newspapers are wont to do, was taking notes, with the extraordinary idea of publication in mind. "We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis," said, for lack of a better word, the adviser, "and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans."

Naturally within minutes the Obama camp was broadcasting those words -- "turning a page on this financial crisis" -- back at the McCain camp, whose bluster and blather must surely have struck Obama advisers with serendipitous bemusement.

Rarely are counteroffensives preceded by counter-counteroffensives. But this one was, sucking all the umph out of its shocking suddenness.

Meanwhile, leaving no guesswork to the opposition, the McCain campaign also signaled the second component of its two-pronged offensive. "'We're going to get a little tougher,' a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming." And these ads, rather than turning pages on the collapsing economy -- something unemployed or imminently unemployed viewers everywhere are likely to forget, right? -- will turn a new page on simple indecency and dishonor: "We've got to question this guy's associations. Very soon," said the operative, meaning already in the can are grainy, slow-mo spots showing Obama's close relations to Tony Rezko and one-time radical William Ayres.

Now, we're all campaign strategists these days so it wasn't as though the details and timing of McCain's final offensive were much of a surprise. But why, in the name of what little suspense is left, would he and his advisers so boastfully reveal so much and so soon?

Could it be that even they doubt it will work, so what the hell, why not go ahead and posture and preen? After all, it's not like they have any constructive policy proposals to fill the dead air and newspaper interviews. No, they merely returned to the only real fundamental they know -- a return to the old GOP playbook of going distractingly dirty.

Although I continue to stand in awestruck admiration of these Rovian spawns' indefatigable chutzpah -- I love never-say-die fighters, even the dumb ones -- this time, I imagine, it just won't work. Or should I say, especially this time.

Simply put, this presidential race has finally turned into an anti-McCain contest. Once again, Obama has been most fortunate in his enemies. They just keep handing him victories. In McCain's case, just quickly review and consider merely a few of his confidence-sapping missteps, to put it kindly: his talk of strong economic fundamentals, followed by, within hours, his talk of a "crisis"; his insistence that he wouldn't debate in a crisis, no, he will debate in a crisis; his absolute refusal to condone pork, except when it's necessary.

There are many, many others, of course -- let's not even get started on the judgment issue of Sarah Palin's recruitment -- and ceremoniously ticking them off might make for a good drinking game, but a lousy basis for a presidential campaign.

At its core, however, the reason McCain's counteroffensive won't work is simply that the problem it's intended to hide -- a full-blown, honest-to-God economic crisis; he at least got that right -- is just too big.

Part and parcel of his coming spiel is much of that good-old, apocalyptic, Hooverian rhetoric about a tax-and-spend Democratic opponent, just when the electorate is poised to embrace a good-old, tax-and-spend Democratic president -- just when it's ready to welcome some classic pump-priming, regardless of deficit woes; just when government spending equates in the electoral mind with jobs and societal security and healthcare.

And the very last thing on the electorate's list of concerns is the microscopic matter of William Ayers, coming to television sets in battleground states everywhere, "very soon."

What a pathetically desperate way to drop victory right in Obama's lap.