In 2005, Rob McKittrick wrote and directed Waiting. Dane Cook was getting popular then, but McKittrick still had a remote sense of shame, so he cast Ryan Reynolds as the lead and gave Dane the role of the unhinged lead chef. A year later an even bigger tool directed Employee of the Month, and cast Dane Cook as the lead. “Finally,” Dane said, “I can show everyone what I’m made of.”

The reason I bring this up is because the Republican Party over the past eight years has acted a lot like Dane Cook’s manager. In 2000, they passed on John McCain for George W. Bush, a born again Christian who provided them with plenty of white rapping and male nudity, but not really anything resembling a good presidency. And now, primarily because they’ve run out of ideas, they’ve decided to give McCain his own shot at the lead role. If you’re like me, this is the easiest decision you’ve ever made, but I should probably mention that Employee of the Month was actually relatively successful.

In fairness though, I think John McCain would be perfectly decent as a president. I also think that he’s very close to being certifiably insane, so I should qualify that by saying he would be a perfectly good president until he goes totally batshit crazy. The problem that everybody has with him is his campaign.

And it’s true, the Republican Party has been vindictive, manipulating, sleazy, and flat out dishonest to the furthest extent they can get away with. It doesn’t help that their supporters have adopted this vitriol as an aspect of their ideology. It also doesn’t help that Barack Obama is very bad at saying things he doesn’t mean.

Apparently McCain is tired. He feels bad about forgoing his dignity, and reducing himself to a machine of political will. Politics is about clawing through the narrowest possible hole until you’ve crashed into the White House. That’s all well and good, but McCain prides himself on being a man of great honor.

Having said that, he still wants to win. Last night he was bitter and defensive. He made flimsy attacks on Obama’s character and disgraceful pleas for his own humanism. In every possible sense, he lost the debate. Obama isn’t a politician who makes slam-dunks. He speaks, and people gauge him in relation to his opponent. Nobody really appreciates how well he debates until he’s already winning. So it wasn’t until John McCain was at the stage of sputtering and frothing and rolling his eyes and refusing to mention Michelle by name, that he finally had a chance to say what he meant, the way he wanted to. The man you saw on TV last night is the man who is running for president, so try to figure out how you felt about him.

We’ve seen this before. He gains composure, takes higher ground, appeals to the higher parts of his nature, while his opponent becomes increasingly rash, bizarre, and disagreeable, and finally in a fit of desperation, sacrifices every last shred of their credibility. It happened to Hillary Clinton in the spring. It’s over.