Poor John McCain. 

Several weeks ago, his presidential campaign was revealed to have raised only $24 million, far less than the other major contenders for the Republican nomination, and had only about $2 million on hand.  That's less than in the penny-pinching coffers of insurgent libertarian Ron Paul, and undoubtedly even less than revealed, given the debts that just keep piling up in no-spending-limit campaigns such as McCain had been running.

A campaign official at the time ventured that McCain might be "forced" to accept public matching funds to continue the campaign.

About half of McCain's campaign staff was let go, but the so-called "straight-talk express" careened on down a campaign road of polling numbers sinking almost as low as finances.

Early this week, upon McCain's return from a trip to Iraq, a slew of McCain's top campaign officials - his campaign manager, senior political adviser, chief fundraiser and others - quit.  That news completely overshadowed a Senate speech McCain gave on the war, but, most important, has thrown an already dysfunctional campaign into chaos.

Obituaries flowed, followed by Phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes counter-punditry, followed by commentary snide and true and many shades of blue.  McCain was transformed from media darling to punching bag in less than a week.

On July 12, The New York Times published an almost unthinkable article about its former hero of ethics.  Why, there was John McCain, in the Senate Republican cloakroom, making a conference call to "his top fund-raisers to urge them to keep up the fight.

"The call, however, may only have exacerbated an already tough week for Mr. McCain.  Senate ethics rules expressly forbid lawmakers to engage in campaign activities inside Senate facilities.  If Mr. McCain solicited campaign contributions on a call from government property, that would be a violation of federal criminal law as well."

Oh my.

But he used his campaign cell phone, said an aide, and he didn't really, specifically ask for money. 

Well, that surely makes it okay.

Except, as the Times points out, "Ten years ago [McCain] led Republican calls for an independent prosecutor to investigate accusations of violations of the same rules by Vice President Al Gore.  Mr. McCain went on to make the episode a cornerstone of both his 2000 Republican primary campaign and his argument for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law."

Since all the current Congress seems to want to do is investigate, we can't wait, but we won't hold our breath either.

Except in the minds of the mainstream media, which proclaimed his front-runner status out of the box, McCain was always an exceptionally iffy Republican nominee.  McCain-Feingold, his original opposition to the Bush tax cuts, his disdain for the religious right, and more recently and far more self-destructively, his support for amnesty for illegal aliens...all combine to give many conservative voters an extreme case of the jitters.  (In fact, several news stories reference McCain's stance on immigration as a major factor for his fundraising woes.)

We have long regarded Senator McCain as a hypocritical opportunist, lacking both the political integrity and emotional temperament to be President.  CFIF was among the original plaintiffs challenging McCain-Feingold as a cynical assault on the First Amendment.  We have opposed numerous other McCain initiatives to limit political speech.

Individual issues pale beside the current exhibition of McCain madness, including the profligate campaign spending he so derides in others.  Before one runs our country, he must run a successful political campaign.  Senator McCain has now shown he can't even do that.