Bottom Falling

I may have become disappointed with John McCain for his opportunistic embrace of El Presidente George W. Bush during the 2004 campaign, the kissing of the ring, the hug, but I can't say that I have any reason to hate him. I'd expect most folk opposing McCain would agree. However, I don't think I can quite bring myself to pity him, at least not yet. Who knows, he could still win the election, he could drop out, he could get someone to pull his campaign together in a dignified fashion (since he clearly can't do it himself, not like Obama can lead his own campaign).

But however you look at it, this is the week, if any, that the bottom keeps falling out of the McCain campaign.

Last night on CBS, in his attempt to turn the election from a mandate for change from eight years of disastrous Republican rule to being all about the surge and trying to claw up some distrust of Barack Obama, McCain got himself interviewed by Katie Couric and promptly made another gaffe, this one confusing the chronology of the "Anbar Awakening" and the start of the surge.

Then his campaign went on today to try and split hairs about over a rather statement made by Obama at the most solemn of Israeli memorials, Yad Vashem, built in honor of the six million European Jews slaughtered under Nazi rule. Not exactly tactful. More like try anything -- desperation.

And, in one of the strangest turns of his campaign so far, McCain's campaign had arranged for him to appear in a great big photo op on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana with that state's Republican Governor Bobby Jindal...but it was suddenly canceled. The McCain campaign claims weather was the reason, and perhaps that was true. But there's also, suspiciously, this concurrent news:

The U.S. Coast Guard has closed 29 miles of the Mississippi River from New Orleans southward after a tanker and a barge collided, spilling more than 400,000 gallons of fuel oil into the river.
Tugboats hold up pieces of a barge after it collided with a tanker Wednesday in the Mississippi River in New Orleans.

The river, a major shipping route between the Midwest and Gulf of Mexico, could be closed for days during the cleanup, the Coast Guard said Wednesday.

More than 30 ships already are queued up along the river, waiting to pass through the closed zone, Coast Guard Petty Officer Jaclyn Young said.

The Coast Guard has deployed 45,000 feet of inflatable booms to contain the spill and is lining up another 29,000 feet, but it could be days before the river is reopened, she said.

The accident left a sheen over 90 percent of the area, she said.

So much for a safe drilling message, John.

Even the mainstream media has to bow to reality sometime...and it looks like they're starting to. And if they're distaste turns to pity, well, we just can't elect a man we pity to Commander-in-Chief.

So I ask again:

Will McCain make it to November 4th as the Republican Presidential nominee?