the bloom is off the rose

Andrew Sullivan lavishes some fond attention on—gasp!—John McCain.

Maybe it’s my upbringing, in an all-boys British high school, where this kind of banter was quite normal. But there’s a great deal about McCain’s humor, sense of fun, emotional reticence - and not the dry drunk psychic shutdown of Bush - that appeals to people. Even his obvious emotionalism in a situation like Georgia - which may not make him the steadiest commander-in-chief.

Then he casts out his favorite son:

The coolness of Obama is hard to latch onto.

That’s kinda surprising! So is this, in which Sullivan’s disappointment is palpable:

Since Obama’s hubris in Berlin, he has lost almost every cycle of this campaign, and lost all of them quite badly. I’m not sure his campaign gets how far they have sunk, and how ineffectual and passive Obama has seemed these past few weeks. The total capitulation to the Clintons at the convention is particularly lame

Obama’s hubris?  I thought he just came off an “objectively miraculous” streak two weeks ago!