No One Can Be Reasonable and Angry at the Same Time

Republican pundits have been calling for John McCain to hit Barack Obama hard on the issues of zero importance: Bill Ayers, ACORN, Tony Rezko, etc. And McCain, at the urging of his base, finally went after Obama on some of those issues in last night's debate. Unfortunately for the McCain/Palin ticket, nobody but your base and Fox News seems to care or think that Obama's innocuous relationship with Bill Ayers is big news or that ACORN is trying to steal the election.

Despite the howls of joy and sighs of pleasure from the right wing conservatives last night, the American people overwhelmingly declared that Obama won the third and final debate. McCain kept trying to insinuate that Obama has some shady dealings in his past, but he can't pinpoint one single thing that would indicate that Obama is lying about these accusations. These accusations appease the Republican base while alienating everyone else.

I think John McCain is stunned that he is losing this election and that is why he appears angry, rude and condescending. When Barack Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination, McCain finally felt it was his time. He preferred Obama as an opponent over Hillary Clinton because he thought he could ride into the White House with little or no resistance over a divided Democrat constituency without having to turn negative or do too much to woo his own base. But he was not prepared to deal with a pragmatic man with ideas that resonate with the middle class and independent voters.

McCain's flip-flopping on economic issues (the fundamentals of the economy are strong; we are in the biggest financial crisis of history; I'm suspending my campaign until a bailout is passed; we need to keep capital in the market so I am proposing that people should be able to take money out of their retirements accounts penalty-free, etc.) and schizophrenic and hateful campaign have turned a capable leader into a caricature of himself. He wants to be president so bad that he will do anything to win, including launching an enormous wave of phone calls in battleground states today with this script:

"Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC (Republican National Committee) because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202-863-8500."

John McCain is angry and he is hurting, but not for the reason that Americans are - it's his pride and his ego.