McCain is trying to scramble to see how he can avoid looking bad after a very bad week. He scalded Obama for not knowing anything about Iraq, then proceeded to demonstrate that he himself knew nothing about Iraq, then defended his lack of knowledge. Then there was yet another lobbyist/campaign advisor in embroiled in scandal (former Senator Phil Gramm, McCain campaign co-chair and chief economic advisor, lobbyist and executive for UBS). McCain came out against a popular GI education bill on baseless grounds. And McCain made a landmark speech that made him look like a complete idiot. Even Fox News couldn’t bring themselves to like him–and when the media’s penchant for giving McCain favorable news coverage can’t quite stop him from looking bad, you know it’s not a good time in McSamesville.

So maybe it’s not surprising that Obama is now taking off in the polls against McCain–jumping to a 6-point lead in the Gallup poll after staying tied for a while. Rasmussen has Obama jumping forward to an 8-point lead. That, and Obama has been hitting home with the theme that McCain is running for a third Bush term. This is based, of course, upon the fact that McCain has tied himself closely to Bush, voting with Bush about 90% of the time, having the same policies on taxes, Iraq, the economy, social security, abortion, immigration, etc. etc.

McCain’s riposte? “Senator Obama says that I’m running for a Bush’s third terms [sic]. It seems to me he’s running for Jimmy Carter’s second.”

And, how is that? Well, umm… there’s really no justification for it, though McCain lamely argues that it’s somehow all about “tax and spend.” Wow! How original! I’ve never heard that before! Jennifer Rubin puts it well:

Now it doesn’t “work” of course in the same way that McCain’s association with George W. Bush does. Carter is not the incumbent president and Obama is not running on a platform to continue any of the Carter policies. But that is not really required for McCain’s purposes.

Exactly. Obama is making a carefully crafted, well-evidenced, and well-earned criticism of virtually McCain’s whole policy platform. All McCain has in return is a punch line–pretty much the only thing working for him this week.

But McCain shouldn’t worry; it shouldn’t be long now before the press finds another non-issue to bash Obama with so they can get back to completely ignoring McCain’s non-stop tour of lies, scandals, and ethics violations.