John, one really wonders how much longer this can go on. But perhaps this is only the beginning of a wider attack by the McCain camp on the “not ready for primetime” theme that has been a mainstay of their attacks on Barack Obama. Virtually everyone is remarking upon the panic which has overtaken the Democratic duo, manifesting itself in obsessive verbal outbursts against Sarah Palin. So it may be that the next stage of this is, as others suggest, for the McCain camp to argue that “the character question it raises is not that he is a sexist or that he lacks courtesy. It is that he folds under pressure.” This is, I think, an accurate take on Obama’s campaign history:
Obama has looked amazingly uncomfortable under the pressure that Palin has put him under. He relies on his cool – it is a core part of his appeal. So he looks bad when he loses it. During the Hillary contest he rarely came under any pressure from the media. When he did he reacted badly. So the problem caused by Palin isn’t really about Palin – it’s about Obama.
And as Obama starts punching back, as he’s threatening to do, he may just make the problem worse. It wasn’t presidential to attack his opponent’s VP and it will be even less presidential for him to take his screeching, negative tone (debuted at his Denver Convention speech) up a notch. It used to be that McCain was the one with the temperament problem. Not any more.