I’m really loving the word “feckless” today.

Normally, it’s not a word I would dare associate with Senator McCain, because as we all know, he’s a war hero, a devoted public servant, and a patriot. Politically, he’s feckless. His campaign is feckless. His message is feckless.

“Good afternoon, Senator. What do you think about the prospects of rising unemployment as a result of the financial crisis? How do we combat such a problem?”

“Well, my friend, I thank you for the question. Senator Obama hates blue cars! How could you possibly vote for a guy who hates blue cars? I may hate blue cars, but I’d never let you know about it like he has. At least if I was campaigning in Detroit. I don’t hate any cars then [wink].”

Yeah, McCain wouldn’t talk much about unemployment. And if he did, he’d talk about it for five seconds before peeling out into some tangential hullabaloo that has little to do with the issue at hand; probably not blue cars, but something equally as [not] pertinent. Why? Why is he so afraid of answering the questions he’s asked? Why is he so afraid of taking these issues head on? Two things:

1. In his heart of hearts, he’s a fierce economic centrist.
2. He has political buffoons spewing off-topic dreck into both ears, because God forbid John McCain campaign for the presidency by, I dunno, changing the Obama template that George W. Bush is somehow responsible for morning traffic, malfunctioning coffee makers, the financial crisis; and by the transitive property of crap, John McCain is equally as culpable.

“2″ needs no further explanation, other than to say that the top brass of the GOP apparently thinks they’re going to get the job done by throttling Obama with the Ayers stuff while ignoring the fact that George W. Bush and John McCain are becoming interchangeable to the electorate. “1″, however, needs more light. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia (via the legitimately all-knowing Almanac of American Politics, published by the National Journal Group), John McCain had a 52%/47% spread of conservative-to-liberal voting during the 2005 congressional year. That’s centrist. Granted, the spread widened to 64%/35% the following year, but was John McCain running for the presidency in 2005? No. Was he laying groundwork in 2006? You bet. And even then, if we view a 50% rating as pure centrism and 100% as pure conservatism, McCain’s 2006 record aired on the left side of moderate conservatism (75%). The guy is no staunch advocate of capitalism. For the most part, the base of his party is. Thus, he has a conflict of interest when talking about economics. He appeals to red state Democrats more than Republicans. That’s why his campaign has been so much about the independent vote. He’s adverse to flexing conservative muscle on economics because he has none.

It was bad for him to agree—at the very least, of being perceived to agree—with Obama on the bailout issue. It’s bad for him to take his mallets and bang the drums of “I hate CEOs and their money!” It’s bad for him to channel economic populism, because economic populism is in line with the platform of that other party. Combine these positions with his militarist foreign policy and pandering to the evangelical Republican base (read: Palin), and you end up with an absolute train wreck. This ticket has produced the ultimate nightmare scenario for the GOP: McCain’s politics display the resolve of balsa wood and Sarah Palin (really, God love her) turned out to be a political klutz on the national scene, ergo, the ticket accomplishes the double, triple, whatever-whammy of alienating everyone.

If McCain isn’t going to offer anything economically different from what Obama has set forth (or even worse: Obama’s tax plan is actually more favorable to those who haul in less than $227K/year, the majority of Americans), why vote for him? There go some of the independents he had despite his foreign policy. There go some of the disaffected Republicans. Sarah Palin — this Bible-thumping mother of 47 children who is less qualified to be VP than the chick who plays her on TV (remember, it’s perception and not necessarily truth)—is a heartbeat away from the presidency if she’s elected? There go even more independents. There go the intellectual conservatives. There go the libertarians.

But hey, they’ll win Oklahoma by 50 points.

Even if McCain succumbs to the pervading sentiments of the Limbaugh crowd—that Palin needs to channel Shakespeare: cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war—she’s an attack hound with the wrong bark. During her debate with Joe Biden, she went out of her way to push the McCain “maverick” label while slamming Obama for his partisan voting record. The problem with such a tactic is that McCain’s independence has no reference point from which voters can judge it to be good or bad. “Sure, he reaches across the aisle. But on what issues? When he went against the grain of his party, was it because the party was too liberal or too conservative?”

McCain had the opportunity of a maverick’s lifetime when the financial crisis arose; an opportunity to buck the status quo while putting on a heroic defense of conservatism that would’ve been lauded by the masses. He could’ve called the bailout bill on the carpet for what it was: a toothless facade that was aimed to deceive the American people into thinking the market would be just fine as long as it passed. Instead, he went along with the panic. And instead of having this gem at his disposal—”I told you weeks ago that this bill was bad news, and we now see that the Democratic Congress and Secretary Paulson misled us”—he’s blended with the mess.

That’s not maverick-y. That’s feckless.