Near Earth Object

Absent a catastrophic national security event or a horrific act of violence against the Democratic nominee,  John McCain is going to lose the election. After a truly grotesque and shameful week of campaigning, I am almost functionally incapable of giving McCain even the slightest benefit of the doubt.

But to suspend my disbelief to its limits, and as a cautious tip of the hat to McCain’s attempts to tamp down at least some fires of violent idiocy at one of his campaign events, I offer this piece of advice to the senator from Arizona, and it is not a suggestion that will win him the election. But it might save his soul.

Sen. McCain, fire your entire campaign staff.

Steve Schmidt–Mephistopheles himself–has orchestrated a strategy that has not only torn an infected rent in the fabric of the country, but has sullied the persona you have crafted over decades. Perhaps that persona was partly or mostly false, but I cannot imagine that you wish to be enshrined in history as the man who waged a campaign of hate and ignorance, and encouraged xenophobic rage in order to lose to the first African-American president, priming the coming years for high probabilities of backlash and maybe violence. You should never have let Schmidt near your person, let alone run your campaign, and you can begin to restore your dignity by throwing him under the Straight Talk Express and backing over him several times.

But don’t stop there. Toss the rest of the bums out, too. Strategically and tactically (remember those words?) they have failed you at every turn since the primaries, from the green screen, to your running mate choice, to your lack of qualifications to run a company, to the nation of whiners, to the Walter Reed Middle School, they have bumbled like fools out of the nominating gate. The worst thing that ever happened to your campaign was Huckabee’s concession, when your operation moved to the general election. Lose each of these fools, and begin anew.

Again, you won’t win the election, and there’s one person to whom you need to make this clear: Sarah Palin. Tell her to stop the hate-engendering rhetoric, tell her to turn her rallies into forward-looking, positive events, and tell her you’ll help her if she wishes to run for president herself in four years. But make it clear to her that if she wants to survive politically (which as of this typing is looking a bit more dicey), she needs to accept the fact that she will be no one’s vice president.

Senator, you’ve truly blown it. I don’t want to put all the onus for your troubles on your functionaries, because the buck most certainly stops utterly and immovably with you. But you have one more move left to prove to the country that you might actually be a maverick: ease ‘er in, and lose with dignity.