Change I Can Believe In, Anyway

Sometimes you get the feeling that the McCain campaign is not so much being run as it is being fought over. There will be a guy who has a strategy, and that guy prevails until another guy jumps him in the hotel corridor, beating him senseless. Then the new guy takes over.

From the looks of it, someone got pretty bruised up Thursday night. Friday morning McCain took my advice and started correcting some Obama misconceptions during one of his hate-drenched townhall rallies; same thing Saturday. Sunday Sarah Palin held an entire rally without once mentioning William Ayers. Presumably this display of civility is at least partially motivated by a desire to avoid the too-ugly tone the campaign has taken. It is also probably motivated by a desire to slow the poll numbers steady descent, like snowflakes or a pearl in a bottle of shampoo.

I admire McCain for the first motivation (I think it's sincere) but I doubt the new strategy will help with the second. Or rather it may indeed slow or even stop the fall but it won't push the numbers back up much. He may gain some ground among disgusted independents but he's just going to lose it among the blood-thirsty base.

With so much at stake, and time running short, (VA State GOP Chairman Jeffery) Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born."

(As Karen Tumulty points out, we do know where he was born; it's Hawaii.)

Since it's likely to be a wash in the Polls, I think the liklihood is McCain is taking the high road on his way out after all. Whether anyone follows him remains to be seen. And of course, there are still three weeks to go. Besides, there's a debate soon - what's to stop another guy on the staff from cold-cocking the current advisor and telling McCain to repeatedly mis-pronounce Obama's name as "Osama?"