The ineptitiude of the McCain campaign no longer amazes me. I've come to expect it.

You might have figured that, after locking up the Republican nomination, Senator McCain would have moved to unite the party behind him.

...that he would have started naming conservatives to key posts in his campaign, both in workaday posts and in advisory positions, as a preview of the kind of people who would fill his administration.

...that he would have drawn up a platform of issues on which he agrees with the conservative mainstream, issues such as cutting earmarks, and stuck to talking about those things for a while.

...and that he would have kept his mouth shut about the Great Googly Moogly, known to members of the Al Gore cult as Global Warming, or, in case that warming thing doesn't pan out, Climate Change. Yes, by shutting up about GGM, he would have cost himself the energetic support of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but California is simply not in play in this election. (There is only one situation in which McCain might carry California against Barack Obama: if he wins in such a landslide that he doesn't need California.)

You might have figured that he would realize that, like every other political candidate, he needs his base to support him, or he's toast. But you would be wrong.

By failing to consolidate support among conservatives, McCain has handed a historic opportunity to Bob Barr, the former Congressman who just won the Libertarian Party nomination. A recent Rasmussen poll puts Barr at six percent, with Obama at 42, McCain at 38, and Nader at four. That means that, according to the poll, Barr's current vote is bigger than Obama's margin over McCain, and more than twice the size of the margin by which President Bush was reelected in 2004.

Ask Al Gore, who lost the 2000 election by 537 votes, about the effect that a "third party" candidate can have on the outcome. Ask President George H.W. Bush, who lost to Bill Clinton by six-and-a-half percent while Ross Perot, who ran mostly to Bush's right, polled 19 percent.

Or ask Barr's campaign manager, Russ Verney, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. Verney used to be the right-hand man to that Perot fellow.