Time is running out for John McCain's campaign. He is behind in the polls and the gap is widening. His campaign has decided to shut shop in Michigan, a state it recently believed it could win. Tomorrow's televised debate with Barack Obama - just one more encounter is scheduled, on October 15 - has therefore assumed an even greater significance. McCain must stop the rot.
His disadvantages in the race are such that it is difficult now to see how.
McCain finds himself in a curious position. He entered the race as an experienced and well-known candidate, much-liked, with years in the Senate behind him. He was running against a virtually unknown novice, with barely any legislative achievements to boast of - and a black man with a funny name, to boot.
McCain was the known quantity, the safer choice, literally the elder statesman and Obama had everything to prove. Yet with four weeks to go, the election is being run by both sides as though the opposite were true.
Obama looks unhurried and presidential, exuding natural authority. He is running as though he were the popular incumbent. Meanwhile, the eager McCain dashes to and fro, hoping to shake things up, striving for attention with one daring stroke after another.
His boldest move, of course, was to select Sarah Palin as his running-mate. (Yawns had greeted the announcement that Joe Biden would be Obama's choice.) That wild ride now appears to be at an end - to little net effect.
To begin with, the nomination of Palin was a great success and conceivably an election-winner. She thrilled the conservative base of the Republican party and turned the heads of many an independent with her speech at the St Paul convention. Democrats sealed her triumphant entry to national politics by expressing their contempt for her and for people like her - all of whom have votes. McCain edged ahead in the polls.
Awful interviews
Then came the television interviews, awful beyond belief. Democrats rejoiced, Republicans hid under their blankets. Much of the nation turned to last Thursday's vice-presidential debate with voyeuristic anticipation: what would it be like to see a politician reduced to tears on live television? Palin bounced back with a confident and comfortable performance. It was too late to undo the harm of the past week or two: she remains a modest net plus for McCain, because of her appeal to the party's base, but her power to attract independents is diminished.
McCain, for all the excitement, is back where he started.
McCain's next audacious move was his attempt to lead efforts in Congress to pass a financial rescue plan. Promising to suspend his campaign, he rushed back to Washington.
His intervention was embarrassingly ineffective. First he was outmanoeuvred by Democrats, who announced (prematurely, as it turned out) that they had reached agreement without him; and then by Republicans in the House of Representatives, who threw out the revised deal to which he had half-heartedly attached his support. He looked irrelevant at best; at worst, an obstacle to progress, seeking only to score political points.
Effortless
Obama characteristically rose above it all. Did he have a plan of his own? No. Did he exert much influence on the plan that eventually passed the House? No. The youngster won praise for standing gravely to one side. (And you must admit, he made it look effortless.) McCain, with the wisdom of years, made a fool of himself by rolling up his sleeves and getting in everyone's way.
The fact that the country has a uniquely unpopular president helps to explain this reversal of roles. McCain has had to run against the administration of George W. Bush as well as against Obama. As an avowed maverick, he could do that well enough - but it is difficult to be both a maverick and a safe choice.
In this subtle way, the unpopularity of the Bush administration undercut McCain's advantage in seniority. It is not so much that McCain is branded with the record of the Bush administration.
The Obama campaign's constant charge that McCain is McSame seems to me to have mostly fallen flat. The problem is that in both opposing Obama and putting distance between himself and President Bush, McCain became an unknown quantity and hence a risk.
The abruptly worsening economic crisis had a reinforcing effect. It pushed the burden of explanation away from the Democratic contender, whose anti-market talking-points blend easily with the popular mood, and towards the Republican, now obliged to clarify his support for deregulation and other dubious doctrines. Never very convincing on economic issues, this is something McCain has struggled to do. Circumstances, in short, gave McCain an uphill task.
Give Obama credit for having the wit to see it: he has spent the past few weeks watching his opponents wear themselves out. McCain's temperament redoubled his difficulties. Voters can tolerate only so much unpredictability in a politician. Zeal to reform government is fine. A passion to win difficult wars can be admirable.
A daring taste in running mates is refreshing. All of the above, however, begins to make people nervous. Voters start to wonder if orthodoxy is being defied for its own sake. They wonder if it all hangs together. They look out for gimmicks and mistakes: there have been plenty of both. They start to use words like "erratic". The electorate may not know Obama, but they seem inclined to trust him. Given everything else, that is all it will take.
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