Another Hail Mary

Weekly Standard editor and New York Times columnist William Kristol advises John McCain, with about three weeks to go, to jettison his campaign and return to the happy warrior he was in 2000 (which is odd, given that George W. Bush after punking McCain, emerged as the GOP standard bearer). Kristol's advice amounts to another Hail Mary, which in football parlance is the last desperate gasp to wring victory from the jaws of defeat. Kristol, and perhaps McCain, suffers from a confusion of sports metaphors, in that he apparently believes that Hail Marys come in threes like the proverbial three strikes associated with baseball. First, it was his selection of the unremarkable Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate - a not so thinly veiled attempt to appeal to the voters who supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries. Then there was the self-serving suspension of the campaign to return to Washington amid the greatest financial crisis since the depression to assist in the bailout talks. In both instances, the calculation never really produced the desired effect. Thus there is no reason to believe that it won't be any different this time, as the clock is running out.