Mock-O-Mania

This is what candidate John McCain is reduced to. The one-time proponent of honor, straight talk and sticking to the issues, the candidate who was mercilessly and unjustifiably smeared in 2000, has himself hired Steve Schmidt and his shop of Rove acolytes. He has turned to the dark side.

Most of the McCain campaign of late consists of attacks on Barack Obama. The attacks are hardly issues-based, but instead focus on schoolyard-level mocking sessions designed to transform Obama's strengths into objects of derision by association. The McCain campaign seems determined to test one of H.L. Mencken's maxims: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

In what may come to be known as the Envy Campaign, Obama is mocked for being too eloquent, as though it has been a comfort these past eight years to have as leader of the free world a man who can scarcely utter a complete sentence or formulate a coherent thought. He is mocked for drawing large crowds, as though it is preferable to have as a leader a man like McCain, who has trouble finding enough people to fill a high school gym who want to hear what he has to say.

Obama is derided for getting along well with world leaders, as though international enmity is preferable, and for his ability to move citizens of foreign countries, as though America would not be better off with a little more respect, friendship and restored credibility in the world.

He is lampooned for being too inspiring, apparently too much like Lincoln, Kennedy, Reagan and Roosevelt for a discerning citizen's taste. His supporters are too enthusiastic and numerous, and he guilty of following the public's wishes too closely, as though that is not the essence of democracy itself.

Obama and his campaign are derided as being too tech-savvy, apparently making the point that a president who is ignorant of how to send an e-mail or "do a Google" is just what this country needs in the twenty-first century.

Obama gets sneered at for being a media darling, now that McCain, who used to be so popular with the fourth estate that he referred to the press as "my base," is no longer that darling himself. Obama is even mocked for promoting energy conservation, as though wastefulness is a virtue.

In what is becoming a festival of pique, envy and ridicule, a veritable glorification of the stupid and shallow over serious examination of national challenges, McCain has cast his die and the polls are narrowing.

For their part, the Democrats grow more worried by the day. They fear Mencken may yet be proved right. It wouldn't be the first time. Just ask John McCain.