Last Call

I'll make this quick and to the point.

A friend of mine once joked that in order to pull off a successful booty call, there are two things you absolutely can't do: 1) wait until the very last minute -- say, four in the morning -- and 2) actually come right out and admit your intentions in no uncertain terms to the person you're calling. (This conversation stemmed from the fact that his roommate had, the previous night, come home drunk from a club, called an ex and, when she picked up, shouted, "Hey, this is a booty call!" into the phone.)

I bring this up because apparently no one ever told John McCain these essential rules.

With less than a month to go before the election, the McCain camp -- having struck out with voters like, well, the old guy at the club -- has chosen to resort to going hyper-negative, making grossly unethical, unsubstantiated claims against Barack Obama in the hope of somehow changing its very bad luck. It's the political equivalent of making a booty call at 4AM. But here's the thing: McCain's people, in keeping with the laughably inept way that they've run their campaign almost from the start, have publicly announced their decision to begin slinging mud. Their surrogates admitted to the press that the only option left is to try to deflect attention away from the issues, like the economy, through scare tactics aimed at painting Obama as a shady outsider who consorts with terrorists and, if elected, will immediately grow a moustache that he can twirl while laughing at America's demise.

It's, needless to say, crap of the highest order.

And it won't work because even the densest among the undecided electorate can see that they're basically getting a drunken late-night phone call from a guy who wasn't able to close the deal any other way. They know this because McCain told them so.

The only smart thing to do, of course?

Hang up.

Otherwise, you'll wake up the morning after election day wondering what the hell happened and feeling really ashamed of yourself.