The word bizarre doesn’t even begin to cover how the McCain campaign presents itself to my eyes. For a minute or two I was taken in by McCain’s announcement on Wednesday. I wondered if this would play out right in American voters’ minds. “Patriotism and putting the country first always goes down well with the American public” I have been told in my political science seminars. But the unbelievably incompetent execution of McCain’s ill thought-out plan and the resulting developments in the race from Wednesday till tonight, the total public disintegration of a presidential campaign within a timeframe that you can still measure in hours, is something I would not have thought possible.

As details are emerging about the dismal performance during the White House crisis meeting, John McCain eats his own words and heads to Mississippi for tonight’s debate with Barack Obama. He can’t not, now that his incompetence is so very obvious and the Democrats have called his bluff. And he is in it to win it. So much so that the McCain campaign has issued a campaign ad claiming McCain had won the debate. A wee bit premature. Not only hasn’t the debate even started yet, the ad already has been published before McCain even announced his participation in the thing.

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