On McCain's Behalf, Would Someone Please Call the Suicide Hotline?

Some mornings I awake, scan the papers and then drop to my knees and pray the November deadline be extended for this presidential race, just so we can see how ultimately squalid, how utterly and at times even comically inept the McCain campaign can get.

Because I don't think they will have exhausted all the Titanic-ally inane possibilities in just the next couple weeks. Doubtless they have an abundance of more jaw-dropping goodies in store for us, but for heaven's sake they need time. More time.

And they certainly cannot be expected to unveil their remaining inventory in, say, one weekend. But Lord knows this past weekend they sure as hell tried.

Digging deep into the right wing's grab bag of demonology, McCain and his thuggish little gang revealed to the faithful in a Saturday morning radio address that they're running not against a Democrat, but a socialist, and a furtively dishonorable one at that: "At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives."

The next day, on "Fox News Sunday," McCain said Obama's "plans" are for the "redistribution of the wealth" -- which, up or down, in reality defines any tax plan -- adding that "that’s one of the tenets of socialism." (Sadly, he forgot to add that downward redistribution -- Obama's preference -- was one of the principal objectives of his Republican hero, Teddy Roosevelt.)

But McCain wasn't through. Later that day, in Ohio, and practically in the same breaths expelled in attacking Obama for wanting to "spread the wealth around," he blurted at a rally that "I’m going to spend a lot of money to bring relief to you."

Huh? Neck brace!

Could it get any worse? Sure it could, for the McCain campaign's buffoonery quota seems to be limitless. I now refer specifically to spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenauer, who, appearing over the weekend on MSNBC, said that the northern section of Virginia -- that would be the section in which Obama is popular -- is not, in the McCain camp's estimation, a part of "real Virginia."

She then proceeded to identify parts of other states that are "real" -- that would be the backwaters of Missouri, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota -- noting that their American authenticity stems from the simple fact that they're "responsive to our message." Those that aren't, it follows, are phony, "otherly," and in a word, unAmerican.

To his credit, MSNBC's Kevin Corke gave Nancy the opportunity to retract this splattering of überzealotry, but she grinningly declined. "All right," said the puzzled interviewer, "I’m just going to let you -- you’re aware of that one. I’m just saying," at which point he trailed off into even greater disbelief.

Was Nancy channeling Minnesota's Michele Bachmann? Of course not. Michele was channeling Nancy, who had channeled Sarah, who has also been vomiting selectively demographic "pro-American" and real-American rhetoric with prescripted abandon. (Years ago, you see, ve also had zee gut Germans und zee bad Germans, und zee real Germans und zee unreal Germans, all of whom cried out for public identification by responsible leaders as a matter of responsible policy and political stability. History is a wonderful guide.)

The naked silliness of it all has got so bad even Republican senators Susan Collins and Norm Coleman are asking the McCain campaign to stop calling their constituents. The calls to which they're pointedly objecting are the ones in which Obama is damned for his past association with "washed-up" radical Bill Ayers, but these senators know legitimate guilt by association when they hear it. Yes, even to his GOP colleagues, John McCain has become a stalking, down-ballot plague.

So how's it all working out for McCain?

Well, let's see. Yesterday his long-time friend Colin Powell called him a demagogue, and over the weekend the Obama campaign announced that in September alone it had raised over $150 million from more than 600,000 new donors -- all of them, no doubt, antiAmericans from the unreal parts of McCain-Palin's Reich.

For the most incurable of politics junkies among us, it's almost a pity that this raucous good fun is constitutionally slated to end in early November. For by arbitrary design, we'll never really know just how ultimately squalid the McCain campaign can get.