Dear Dr. Democrat:

Worried in Walla-Walla

Dear Worried:

If John McCain loses, in his post-campaign career he could be the next George Burns. Like Burns, he’ll probably live forever and could be wheeled out to do his schtick on important occasions.

What’s going here, of course, is two things and both are a bit remarkable because, for the first time since Karl Rove’s boy Steve Schmidt signed on, the campaign is pursuing strategies rather than short-lived tactics designed to win news cycles.

First, McCain is laying the groundwork for losing. If there is a landslide and if he does not rehabilitate his image before Nov. 4, his entire career before this campaign will be trashed by the choice of Sarah Palin and the ugliness that she has unleashed. By showing his inner George Burns at the Al Smith dinner and on Letterman last night, he’s reminding his friends in the media of his old self with the hope they’ll help him regain some of his dignity. (It’s a cinch that they will.)

I expect we’ll see very little of the snarling Grampy character and much more of amiable Mr. Moderate

The other, much more difficult strategy at play is to an attempt to reverse the polls and win the election. This strategy has two opposing parts: First, regain the high ground in his public performances and, second, simultaneously pursue nasty tactics under the radar, like the robocalls going on in Virginia and elsewhere that claim Obama had “close ties” to Ayers.

I expect we’ll see very little of the snarling Grampy character Schmidt and others created and much more of amiable Mr. Moderate, whom he reintroduced in New York last night.

To make this work, they will have to muzzle Palin — their only big draw — by making it increasingly difficult for the press to cover her. Expect to hear her stump speeches softened to pablum and to see her sent to increasingly remote venues. There were reports yesterday that campaign operatives are preventing reporters from interviewing ruffians in her audiences, which is an alarming development, and that they are even using the Secret Service to keep reporters at bay.

It’s hard to say what’s worse here — the fact that the campaign is restricting reporters’ access to crowds or that the reporters are such cattle that they allow themselves to be restrained

The problem with bringing back Mr. Moderate now is that it is probably too late. McCain’s campaign has had the extreme right-wing base sewn up since Palin made her Gidget-at-the-Reichstag speech in St. Paul. Just about every tactic they’ve deployed since then has alienated moderates and driven them to Obama — where, frankly, most of them don’t want to go. There are still plenty of undecideds and squishy lean-Obamas in Florida and Ohio who could change this thing at the last minute. All McCain has to do is give them a rationale to come back to him.

So what we should expect for the next 14 days or so is much more of Mr. Moderate (and less and less of Reichstag Barbie) on the stump, and a simultaneous surge in nastiness underground like the robocalls in red states where Obama is doing well. We probably won’t know the full extent of the dirty tricks until after the election.

It may well work. But if McCain is elected, he’s going to have a problem few presidents other than Bush in his second term have had: He will enter office with the absolute loathing of at least half the citizenry. Worse for him than Bush is the fact that he’ll face a solidly Democratic Congress (although if he wins, there won’t be super-majorities in either house).

There will be no honeymoon for President McCain.