Memo to McCain's Web People -- It's "Merchant Marine," not "Marine Merchant": Some military illiteracy over at JohnMcCain.com:

This week, John McCain also delivered the commencement address at the U.S. Marine Merchant Academy, where he spoke about the importance of public service.

06/23/2007 10:41 AM  |  Comment (4)

Some Bad Recent Headlines for McCain: It hasn't been a good week.

* McCain's Campaign Sinking Fast -- But Why?
* McCain's Support Drops Among Iowa Republicans
* McCain Puts Romney Supporter on Endorsement List
* Utah McCain Supporters Fuming Over Anti-LDS Comments
* McCain Apologizes After Alleged Criticism of Mormon Faith
* McCain Campaign Senior Adviser Bans Rival Candidate From Event
* Romney Tops $1 Million in Arizona
* Political Foes Enter McCain's Home Turf
* Small Crowd Greets McCain in Tampa
* McCain Plays Down the Money Chase
* McCain, Self-described 'Happy Warrior' of 2000, Gives Way to Negativity
* The Miseducation of John McCain
* Looking for Love at the Globe, Has McCain Signaled End to Prez Ambitions?

Ouch. There's also an emerging narrative of "too principled to win." Check it out:

* McCain: Suicidedly Right
* When Honesty Isn't the Best Policy
* Taking on Big Donors, McCain Takes a Big Risk
* Suicide John: McCain Collides With the Base

Is he done? I'm no kind of campaign reporter, so I can't tell you. Three observations, though:
1) Second quarter fundraising deadline is June 30. If those numbers come back disappointing for the second straight quarter -- and signs point to "yes" -- the palpable gloom will deepen, particularly if in the meantime,
2) His poll numbers continue to nosedive, especially in New Hampshire and South Carolina (do click on that last link), where he has based much of his resources and campaigning theory on. (Even though, back in 2000, he would have easily weathered the South Carolina loss if he would have won New York and California soon after; but he did not.)
3) At some point soon, if it hasn't happened already, he's going to realize that this is how we're going to remember John McCain. However this ends up, it'll be our lasting snapshot. McCain takes the concept of "Honor" more seriously than most any politician alive, and is haunted by it when he consciously takes expedient political actions that violate his beliefs and values. Like his famous waffling on the Confederate Flag in South Carolina in 2000, of which he later wrote:

[I]t could come down to lying or losing. I chose lying.

After he'd been beaten in 2000, McCain went back to South Carolina, apologized for his dishonesty, and called for the flag to be "removed from your Capitol." How is he handling it this time around? Uh....

MR. GOLER: [...] An Internet question for you, Senator. Royce from Philadelphia asks if South Carolina should be free to fly the Confederate flag from state buildings. (Groans from the audience.)

SEN. MCCAIN: That's --

MR. GOLER: In 2000, sir, you said yes. You have since called that one of your worst examples of political cowardice. That flag is still flying in front of the Statehouse. Should it come down?

SEN. MCCAIN: It is not flying on top of capitol. It is flying at the --

MR. GOLER: It is flying in front of the Statehouse, sir.

SEN. MCCAIN: It is not flying on top of the capitol.

Yes, I was wrong when I didn't say it -- well, when I said that I believed that it was up to the state of South Carolina. That was a wrong statement on my part.

Now, after long negotiation amongst most parties, there is an agreement that that flag no longer flies on top of the capitol of the state of South Carolina.

Almost all parties involved in those negotiations believe that that's a reasonable solution to this issue. I support it. I still believe that it should not have flown over the capitol, and I was wrong when I said that it was a state issue. But now I think it has been settled, and I think it's time that we all moved on on this issue -- especially the people of South Carolina.

We weren't going to win this campaign on money anyway. It's whether we can do what we did in the year 2000, and that's go out and do the real politicking, the retail politicking that's necessary.

So I'd look for some face-saving, party-line-crossing behavior from the senator in coming weeks, but if the polls and money don't rebound by July 1, I don't see how he can afford, let alone find the positive energy for, another 18 months of this stuff. But like I said, I'm no campaign reporter.

06/22/2007 02:08 PM  | 

I Am Quoted in This Article About the Recent Disclosure of Sego's Separation, and How Such a Thing Could(n't) Be Imaginable Here In Amerloque-land: It's in French! Better still, it's for that rarest of birds ... a new French journalism outlet. Hooray for new publications that aim high!

06/21/2007 10:06 PM  | 

Five-Word Movie Review, Sicko: Entertaining, necessary polemic.... Socialism's painless!

06/21/2007 10:06 PM  |  Comment (6)

Fancy New War Planes and Hot Chicks: Apparently that's what the Weekly Standard's blog has come down to, four years into their winnable war.

06/21/2007 06:01 PM  |  Comment (1)

I Hadn't Seen This William F. Buckley Cut&Run Jobbie From March: I knew he'd gone off the reservation, Iraq war-wise, but a full-throated endorsement of congressional timetables? A not-so-thinly veiled broadside against Bush/Cheney imperialism? Check out the ending:

The American voter has therefore no strategic expectation of finality, and it is because of this that congressional dissidents are having so much success in waving before the voters individual dates when, through the manipulation of appropriated funds, reduced numbers of Americans would be available to effect whatever it is that the administration intends to effect.

A better formula than that of Sen. McCain is needed. We have our republic -- if, as Benjamin Franklin cautioned at the close of the Constitutional Convention, we can keep it. The Constitution is a pretty orderly counting-house specifying jurisdictions, privileges and limitations. We have in the past six years fairly thoroughly rung up the presumptive authority of the chief executive to exercise the power of the military

But there comes a time when rearward legions of a republic feel the need to assert their residual dominance, and we're getting very close to the moment when the people, surveying the policy, weighing its prospects, considering its benefits, step forward with their ultimate supremacy -- we are a republic. Scorning revolution, they do so gradually, but definitively.

The voters express themselves in manifold ways. Their representatives are taking small steps toward dissociation from the war, but warning of major steps. We have one-half of U.S. senators disposed to say that in their judgment the time is up. The only quarrel now is jurisdictional, not popular. The authority of the republic needs from time to time to be asserted. Not with the consent of everyone, but with the consent of everyone who accepts the rule of the people.

06/19/2007 06:16 PM  |  Comment (2)

Maybe I'm in the Minority on This: But I'm a big fan of Keith Richards' backing vocals. Even (especially?) while all junked up in the '70s.

A cleaner, more unplugged, and two-decades-later version here.

06/18/2007 12:34 AM  |  Comment (5)

Hi! What are you doing down here?