The McCain campaign’s final week gets off to a bad start

Mike Allen reports that in conversation with him “a top McCain adviser one-ups the priceless “diva” description [of Palin], calling her “a whack job.” Now, this is—to put it mildly—unhelpful. The idea of Palin ‘going rogue’ is catnip to the press and this quote will dominate at least the first news cycle of the day.

The McCain campaign is down in every key battleground state with a week to go. They are going to have to turn in one of the great final week performances in campaign history to turn this round. They cannot afford to lose news cycles to distractions like this. Instead, they need to remind the electorate that the next president will inherit two wars and will probably have to work out how to stop Iran going nuclear in his first term.