John McCain's Campis Close to Chaos.

John McCain’s camp is close to chaos.

Three weeks before the election Barack Obama is putting forth his proposal on how to fight the financial crisis. Meanwhile, John McCain is trying to prevent his camp from falling apart.

Obama has been leading in the polls for the last two weeks by a strong six to seven percent. Tomorrow McCain will get his last chance, as commentators claim, to reverse unfavorable trends. This will be the third and last debate between the presidential candidates; this time it will be held at Hofstra University.

Obama has already presented his new economic plan, which in fact just puts together all the proposals that Obama has already made, however, in the time of the financial crisis it may be well-received by voters. The Democratic candidate first and foremost promises help for the American middle-class, lower taxes for 95% of American families, easier loan access for small and medium companies, and also support for the unemployed and uninsured.

At the end of last week, McCain announced his new economic plan too. On Sunday morning, his close colleague senator Lindsey Graham revealed its excerpts including smaller taxes on capital revenues and dividends, which is supposed to attract new capital to the US. However, a few hours after Graham’s appearance, McCain’s camp spokesperson said, “We don’t have immediate plans to announce any policy proposals outside the proposals that John McCain has announced.”

There are more signs indicating that McCain’s campaign is not doing well.

Last week the Republican candidate put forth a proposal calling for the government’s purchase of bad housing loans, which would cost at least $300 billion. When it turned out that such provisions had already existed, McCain simply stopped talking about it.

On Sunday McCain told his supporters that he would, “whip” Obama’s “you know what” at Wednesday’s debate; however, soon after, he again stressed that he respects Senator Obama and that he wants to run a “civilized campaign.”

The troubles of McCain’s camp can be best reflected in arguments over how strongly it should attack Obama, mainly for his links with radicals such as Bill Ayers, (a former terrorist but now a professor at University of Chicago) or pastor Jeremiah Wright, who proclaimed “the end of America.”

For the last ten days almost all the right-wing commentators have been appealing to McCain to finally overhaul the Democratic candidate. In fact, the Republican candidate’s camp has released videos showing Obama with Ayers. Sarah Palin has talked about it, so has McCain himself. However, yesterday they both toned down and did not mention Ayers at all.

As a result of these tactics, McCain is losing, rather than undermining trust for Obama.

Only three weeks ago the opinion poll in which voters were supposed to declare which candidate they liked revealed that McCain had the same number of supporters as Obama. Today 58% of Americans like Obama, compared to 38% who do not. Meanwhile, only 49% of them think positively about McCain, whereas 43% who negatively about him.

Apart from an incoherent message, McCain’s camp is also lacking efficiency in its operations. Since the beginning of September, after the party conventions when the final stages of the campaign began, McCain and Palin have attended only 55 rallies in ten most crucial states, whereas Obama and his running mate Biden have participated in as many as 95 rallies.

With its internal division, “McCain’s campaign is following in Hilary’s footsteps,” wrote CNN commentator Ed Rollins yesterday. “The campaign…is … suffering from “schizophrenia,” he added. Of a similar opinion is Bill Kristol, an influential editor-in-chief of the neoconservative magazine, the Weekly Standard. Even though in the last few weeks the magazine has encouraged McCain to attack Obama, Kristol wrote yesterday that it is time to stop that. He even suggested that McCain ought to apologize, as “the presidential race has degenerated into a shouting match.” He also proposed that “it is time for McCain to fire his camp.”