"his campaign has been so chock full of excitement, however, that the debate lost some of its normal most-important-moment-in-history sheen. The real tension, after all, had been getting McCain there in the first place. A simple trip to Mississippi turned into a saga featuring many, many rapidly changing story lines:

* Cancel the debate!

* Maybe cancel the debate!

* No debate unless Congress passes a financial rescue bill!

* No debate unless Congress has a plan to pass a financial rescue bill.

* Oh, what the heck.

After all that, when the wandering debater finally showed up Friday night, he just looked like a smallish, grayish, slightly grumpy guy with a grizzly obsession.

To be fair, it had been a very long week for McCain, what with ruling out the debate, ruling in the debate and returning to a Senate from which he has been AWOL so long that it's believed his desk is now being used to store janitorial supplies.

He raced there in answer to the crisis call, after a brief detour to New York to deliver a desperately needed speech on fossil fuels at the Clinton Global Initiative. He could not have sounded more filled with passion about service and country and the need for his leadership. Then he joined President Bush, Obama and members of Congress in a White House meeting that his campaign had orchestrated, where he sat in near-silence as a bipartisan consensus fell apart.

One thing we now know for sure. Electing John McCain would be God's gift to the profession of journalism. A story a minute.

Imagine what would happen if a new beetle infested the Iowa corn crop during the first year of a McCain administration. On Monday, we spray. On Tuesday, we firebomb. On Wednesday, the president marches barefoot through the prairie in a show of support for Iowa farmers. On Thursday, the White House reveals that Wiley Flum, a postal worker from Willimantic, Conn., has been named the new beetle eradication czar. McCain says that Flum had shown "the instincts of a maverick reformer" in personally buying a box of roach motels and scattering them around the post office locker room. "I can't wait to introduce Wiley to those beetles in Iowa," the president adds.

On Friday, McCain announces he's canceling the weekend until Congress makes the beetles go away.

Barack Obama would just round up a whole roomful of experts and come up with a plan. Yawn."

NYT Columnist