McCain loose lip leads to trouble

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain prefers "town hall style" campaign events, where he takes questions from the audience and avoids set speeches and prepared remarks. This gives him an open, forthcoming image, but the lack of structure leaves him unfocused, off message and chasing rabbit trails too many times.

The keys to the election are taxes and gasoline prices. Obama wants to raise taxes and resist additional oil drilling. These are very unpopular positions, which he is already trying to back away from, but give McCain a big advantage if he can capitalize.

But shooting from the hip, as he likes to do, tends to undercut the efforts of his campaign handlers to stay on message and take advantage of Obama's unpopular stances. Just yesterday, McCain allowed as how increasing social security withholding taxes might be feasible. This lets Obama off the hook, for his calls for higher taxes "on the rich," whoever they are.

Obama's flip flops, as he is already doing on oil drilling and a long list of other issues are as important as the issue itself, if McCain can be consistent and not get himself in trouble with sideshows about race and other non-core issues.

Prepared speeches are the best way to avoid this problem, but McCain resists them like the plague. He also looks canned and programmed with a prepared text. Obama falls apart without one.

It is nothing short of a miracle that McCain has made it this far, and amazingly, is still in the race. He has actually been rising in the polls in recent days, as Obama fails to warm up the voters.

This won't continue, unless McCain becomes a great deal more focused and targeted in his remarks. The scattergun approach will come under the microscope as the election draws nearer, and McCain will fall under major attack. To take advantage of what look to be major Obama problems, McCain will need to clean up his own act.