The John McCain mythos rests on two intersecting narratives. The first, the Maverick, is exemplified by the bottom-of-his-class Naval Academy prankster, who refused to tow the family line, military line, and standard party line. In this narrative, McCain marches to his own drummer in novel bipartisan solutions to knotty problems, even when it’s not politically expedient. In this way McCain fulfills a deeper myth that Americans have of themselves: We don’t play by the rules; we MAKE them.

This is also the narrative of the American West: socially moderate, fiscally conservative, and fiercely independent. From cowboys to ranchers, outlaws to venture capitalists, the free-spirited, risk-taking Western narrative meshes with McCain’s own song of himself.

The second John McCain narrative is that of the Survivor. McCain survived unfathomable torture and deprivation in a North Vietnamese POW camp. He survived cancer. He survived Rove-ian slimeball in 2000. And he survived a 2007-2008 Republican primary battle in which he was counted out on several occasions.

In the McCain survivor narrative, the candidate triumphs over adversity. The long odds against his triumph in this particularly unfavorable general election are exactly the scenario McCain the Survivor relishes. If, as Obama’s handlers imply, the Campaign Reflects the Man, then an Obama presidency will be drama-free, deliberate, and articulate.

In fact, a hallmark of the four great political dynasties in the post-Kennedy era has been the presence of a similarly disciplined, talented, and well-oiled political machine behind the candidate. Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush, Jr. would have gotten nowhere without their able and loyal lieutenants (Haldeman, Meese, Carville, Rove, et. al.). For all her wonky smarts, Hillary Clinton lacked a savvy team, as well as the imagination and wherewithal to overcome such a glaring deficit.

McCain might be that rare candidate who can win without a solid machine behind him. He’s a modern marvel of grit, chutzpah, and idiosyncrasy that can change the game overnight precisely because he does not play by the insider’s playbook. I see a lot of myself in John McCain. For me, the McCain mythos is the Crotty mythos, even though we differ on policy particulars.

If he can get enough swing state voters to align their personal mythos with his, McCain can win this election. Thus far, the cool, meticulous, Ivy-educated -- if paint-by-numbers -- liberal has won the mythological battle, even though McCain has the more harrowing and inspiring story to tell. While one can easily mock Obama’s odyssey towards the presidency as the culmination of a solipsistic quest for self-awareness, it too is particularly American. For what sets Americans apart from every other group on earth is their subconscious search for “home,” and invariable, if all-too-public, working out of personal issues and beliefs that in more seasoned cultures would be considered gauche.

Like Obama, most Americans are mutts. We are men and women of mixed ethnicities, geographies, and identities who, nevertheless, come together as a microcosm of the world. In this year’s Democratic narrative, Barack Obama is the microcosm of this greater microcosm. As such, he personifies a singularly American Idea: that anyone from anywhere can be anything they want regardless of age, background, religion, or race.

In Obama’s Lincolnesque narrative, we are a nation of ideas, not of men. Today we find ample fodder for this position, for we see that mortal men and women have failed America once again. We see that most nakedly in the current financial crisis, which began on our shores and now besets all nations. We see it in the tone-deaf AIG executives who had the gall to spend over $400,000 on a spa vacation AFTER their company, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, was bailed out by the generous American taxpayer. It makes me wonder now if anyone in corporate America got, or will EVER get, the memo.

But just as the Obama narrative makes us yearn for laws that protect us from the blindness of greedy men, there’s buried within the American Idea the narrative of the National Savior: leaders like Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt who seize the moment of greatest glory to lift a nation upon their backs and carry it across a troubled sea.

Especially at times such as these, where there is serious talk by serious men of not just a recession but worse, we yearn for a leader with the courage and confidence to cast out the amoral usurpers of the great American Idea from the temple of our democracy.

I wish Rudy Giuliani had been a better campaigner because if ever there was a time for Rudy’s brand of incisive toughness it is surely now. Giuliani is best known for being there for us after 9/11 in a way that our installed Regent, G.W. Bush, never could be. But Rudy’s more impressive achievement was standing up to two-bit thugs, Mafia kingpins, self-aggrandizing terrorists, and New York’s pernicious band of bureaucratic obstructionists. Rudy had courage, charisma, and humor. Were he president, I have no doubt that Rudy would do the right thing regarding this credit crisis. Heads would roll. Serious reform would be enacted. And corporate America and Wall Street would cower in fear before Rudy’s righteous wrath.

On October 15, at Hofstra University, on Hempstead, Long Island, a mere twenty miles from Ground Zero, John McCain can make a last stand for not only his candidacy, but for the brand of can-do politics personified by Mr. Giuliani. The two big crises of our time – 9/11 and the Credit Crunch – both originated in New York’s Wall Street. Right now, McCain needs to become Giuliani, the quintessential New Yorker, and make the case that when times get tough, you need a guy who can take a punch, who can throw a punch, and who can think outside the box on a moment’s notice.

Given his nature, you might say that McCain has set things up for a raucous finale. The side issues, the distractions, the subordinates, the surrogates, don’t matter so much now. Reverend Wright and Charles Keating are not going to decide this election.

It’s now mano a mano. McCain versus Obama. In a way, McCain is precisely where he wants to be: behind in the polls, a decided underdog, counted out, short on resources, with members of his own party and most of the mass media all working against him. He’s back in that lonely Hanoi prison cell, surviving on wits and inner strength. You know he’s savoring the battle of wills.

But what must trouble John McCain, and what troubles many voters, is that the old warhorse may not be up for his final battle. It’s one thing to be a closer, and to relish the opportunity to come from behind because of the adrenaline rush it provides, it’s another to possess the soundness of body and mind to pull off the feat at such an advanced stage in one’s career. Tuesday night’s debate in Tennessee showed a more crotchety side to the Arizona Senator, as well as lapses in word usage and logic that didn’t help his cause. It’s quite clear that if McCain was 56, instead of 72, he’d be ahead of the artfully disguised Hyde Park leftist.

But he is nearly 25 years older than his opponent. So, if John McCain is to pull off one of the biggest, most improbable, come-from-behind triumphs in American political history, he must listen to the wiser voices in his retinue and pull in the reins, tighten up the demeanor, lay off the trash talk, and hammer away on the key issues that could still go his way:

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
Swing voters WANT to give John McCain this election because of his long and courageous service to our nation. They will literally carry him over the finish line, if he can prove he’s not too loony, angry, and undisciplined for the job. Obama is a safe, and, as the last debate showed, boring pick. Boring can be reassuring when one is up in the polls.

By contrast, McCain is a game-changer. Swing voters know that. But McCain needs to dial back the intensity, carefully construct his sentences with the precision and elegance of Obama, while still positioning himself as a man of thoughtful but immediate action in contradistinction to Obama’s tendency to check the wind. Gore lost to Bush because he struck swing voters as a snarky, know-it-all doofus. McCain needs to act the role of omniscient commander-in-chief, not the abrasive fighter in the trenches.

IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
It took a lucky follow-up question on Tuesday night for McCain to state with clarity what he would do in Afghanistan. He needs to simplify the rhetoric. “We are winning in Iraq because of the New Iraq Strategy I advocated. We will win in Afghanistan because we are sending General Petraeus over there to implement the same strategy that is working in Iraq. It often takes time and mistakes in a war to arrive at the correct strategy. You may disagree with the Iraq War, but one clear benefit of that war is that we battle-tested a winning strategy to defeat the terrorists on their turf, so we don’t have to fight them here at home. And we will apply that secure-and-hold strategy to terrorist hot spots around the globe. Senator Obama’s bold new idea is to talk incessantly about the mistakes of yesterday. I quickly learned from those mistakes and adopted a strategy that will bring us victory with honor in the war on terror.”

Now stop wandering around the room, Senator.

THAT "ECONOMY THING OF OURS"

Anyone who has studied the current credit crisis knows full well that blame goes to both parties, as well as to mortgage lenders, CEOs, and dunderheaded homebuyers. But the Democrats have effectively made this a referendum on how Wall Street securitizes risk, when, in fact, the securitization of risk knows no party. The current credit crisis has less to do with trickle down economics than it has to do with liberal-led pressure on Freddie and Fannie to push loans on poor people with bad credit and no ability to repay. Democratic notions of social engineering are, thus, the root cause of the current financial mess. Obama’s storied community organizer career with the now-scandalized ACORN was drenched in the leftist social engineering ethos of Sol Alinsky. It’s no surprise that Obama served on panels and boards with William Ayers, since they shared the same political agenda.

McCain needs to continue hammering Obama on his ties to the big donations of Fannie and Freddie. He needs to note that he, John McCain, co-sponsored a bill back in 2005 for tighter regulation of these government-sponsored enterprises. But, unlike Obama, the finger-pointing professorial scold, McCain not only diagnosed the root cause of the credit crisis, he’s now advocated a fast and effective remedy. McCain’s plan to buy back troubled mortgages through his American Homeownership Resurgence Plan is an immediate grassroots solution that cuts across party lines and cuts hard against Republican fiscal orthodoxy to solve a problem of deep concern to Americans. By this policy alone, McCain can turn the economic debate in his favor and perhaps save his candidacy.

The chips are down. McCain is against the ropes. He’s the loner Jake LaMotta, the “Raging Bull,” up against the smooth and beloved Sugar Ray Robinson and his huge entourage of advisors, handlers, and adoring fans.

Right now the Kid is having his way with the aging fighter. But even with McCain’s desperate and embarrassing attempts to land a political haymaker (e.g., the specious guilt-by-association attempts to malign Obama’s stellar character), the McCain mythos should remind us: no one should count out Gramps just yet.