Damn skippy. Erratic at BEST. All of the other possible explanations for his behavior are worse.

Howard Wolfson-

This was worse, far worse, than a wasted day for the GOP. Not only did American viewers hear about Gustav, but on network after network there was an unrelenting reprise of the Katrina coverage, and Bush's mishandling of the crisis. Which means that although McCain escapes the appearance of W at his own convention, the unpopular president was ever present in the Gustav narrative.

As for the news today being "fillied with questions about McCain's judgment in picking Sarah Palin," yes, I agree. But this was also the case last night. As I said on another thread, last night I watched quite a bit of CNN, NBC, ABC, & CBS, and the only story to really break through the coverage of Gustav was (repeatedly) the Bristol Palin pregnancy story.

And this huge, prominently placed, front-page headline from today's NY Times--"Disclosures on Palin Raise Questions on Vetting Process"--suggests that the story has already begun to change the frame narrative of the GOP campaign: the media focus now is on the extent of McCain's knowledge of Palin's background before he selected her (What did McC know and when did he know it?).

The pregnant daughter here serves as the first serious breach in the levee, and now other doubts and concerns about Palin have come flooding through, attaching themselves to the new narrative, the narrative of McCain's questionable judgement in selecting SP: ". . .it was learned that Ms. Palin," says the NYT, "now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Mr. Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge."

There's also this: "Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background." Which makes the campaign seem assbackwards, trying to vet Palin only now AFTER the decision to nominate her was already made.

One would expect the new narrative about McCain's judgement to spin off several other related narratives as well, such as the one I heard last night on more than one network: will Palin survive the Convention as VP, or will McCain have to pull back and nominate someone else to replace her?

Even if McC rides out the storm and stands behind his selection of SP, the force of the narrative swirling around him (and his judgement)--plus the obsessive interest in Palin's pregnant daughter (last night, Larry King was already hoping that CNN's correspondent in Alaska might unearth the name of the baby's father)--the force of this narrative (as I suggested above) looks as though it is going to blunt and obscure any message the Repugs try to get out during their own convention.

And this, in turn, will negate any anticipated bounce McCain might have received from a week's worth of free, prime-time, coast-to-coast air time.

Apparently one of the convention themes is McCain as "The Original Maverick."  After all this, though, isn't the "maverick" theme potentially a double-edged sword?  The line between "maverick" and "loose cannon" seems pretty thin.

Mr. Wolfson, it is great to read your blogs. Not sure how long you plan to stay, but hopefully it'll be for a while.

This is the Lord's payback for that "Pray that it rains on Obama's speech" business.