Strategy and tactics

Fasten your seatbelts and pop a dramamine or two because this is going to get really ugly.

It has long been apparent that John McCain and his top advisers understand the essential strategic fact of this election: John S McCain cannot win - his only chance of victory is to make Obama lose. More precisely, if he is to defeat Barack Obama, he can only do so by making him unacceptable in the eyes of a majority (or perhaps a plurality) of voters.

In support of this overall strategy, McCain has shown himself willing to abandon his trademark honor and "straight talk" the better to engage in the basest sort of campaign tactics. He has accused Obama of being willing to lose a war to win an election. For two weeks, he's been trying to blame the financial crisis on Obama. Half of the time, he just plain lies. And when he's called on it, he just keeps doing it.

He has also shown himself willing to take enormous and reckless tactical risks. The Palin pick looms largest. His unhinged pas-de-un over the financial crisis (which, as Hertzberg points out, he keeps calling a "fiscal crisis", which it is not) is almost as bad - little more than a series of self-dramatizing gestures and self-contradictory remarks, which reveal a political desperation comparable to his economic fecklessness.

Last week was a disaster. This week could get worse.

JohnMcCain is tired, tetchy, frustrated, confused, and close to desperation.

If the scurrilous attacks on Obama up to this point haven't worked, don't look to the McCain campaign to change its tactics - expect it to intensify them. They are going to get nastier and uglier. They are going to try to make Obama look like the anti-Christ. Literally.

John McCain has already sacrificed his honor. What else does he have to lose?