He might still win. And then, again, he might not. What matters most, in some sense, is that Capt. John McCain has chosen not to strike his colors. There is enormous potential significance in McCain's attempt to rise from the inanity and waste of the weeks since the GOP presidential convention.

How do we know for sure he's making the attempt? We can't for sure. We can't know anything in this crazy, extraordinary year of 2008. What we can deduce is that he knows what he's about to get is plow-cleaned the way things are going. He knows, from deep experience, that it's time to do something, namely, lead.

It's what officers do. It's what McCain is in this thing for in the first place — to lead. It's his last hope — to be seen leading at a time of stress.

At Virginia Beach on Monday, McCain acknowledged what Republicans and conservatives have been saying for days. "We have 22 days to go," he said. "We're six points down. The national media has written us off."

Well, why not? Hardly had the McCain-Palin campaign launched at the GOP presidential race than it sprang leaks. Soon it was low in the water. As the stock market sagged, then plummeted, the most McCain could find to say was that the chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission should be fired, and that we should all hate greed. The dramatic moment he had intended, or his advisers had intended for him — the suspension of campaigning in order to help solve the financial crisis — was a bust.

The attacks on Obama, likewise, flopped. Bill Ayers was a very bad actor in 1970, but who cares about him in 2008? What are (BEGIN ITALS) you (END ITALS) going to do for us, John? Where do (BEGIN ITALS) you (END ITALS) want to go?

The Virginia Beach speech wasn't a bundle of answers. Its strength was tone, attitude. McCain would lead. He was an officer, running — he finally seemed to understand — for the role of commanding officer. Commanders get out in front. They say to discouraged troops: Come on, get up, we're moving. They say: I know what to do, I'll lead the way. Get up, let's go.

"We're in a moment of national crisis that will determine our future," said McCain, acknowledging what everybody else in the country knew. Will we continue to lead the world's economies, or will we be overtaken? Will the world become safer or more dangerous? ... My answer to you is: Yes, we will lead; yes, we will prosper; yes, we will be safer; yes, we will pass on to our children a better, stronger country."

It may not work in the end. Or it may. The signal factor here is McCain's evident realization that his strength, in the name of the political party with which he identifies, isn't the careful parsing of phrases and programs. His strength is the look that says, here's what's wrong, come on, let's get to work.

So up he stands, with just weeks to go before the election, and says, here's what we do. If not nearly enough at this point, believe and buy in — he has still the chance to leave an important legacy. A McCain wipe out — occasioned by obsession with marginalities rather than penetrating attention to the nation's economic and security problems — would entrust government for years to a party with no instinct for economic freedom and no eye for discerning easily the difference between friend and foe on the international scene.

McCain needs, for various reasons, to give Obama a race for his money. First, because what presidential candidate could relish going down in history as just another Bob Dole, hawking Viagra on television? Second, because scaring even a victorious Obama could slow him down, and also his supporters, as they moved to raise taxes and redefine America's role in the world.

What's the program for McCain? The Virginia Beach speech, one can only hope, tips it. The program is to do what John McCain has so often said he wants to do: Lead.

William Murchison is a senior fellow of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. To find out more about William Murchison and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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