There are barely five weeks left in this election campaign and the wild rollercoaster ride still isn't over. Even if Congress finally gets a handle on the financial crisis, the election whirrs along with its own zig-zag dynamic. It's intellectually and emotionally draining to go through 18 months of political surprises, setbacks, recoveries and disillusionments. Never have the peaks and valleys seemed so high and low.

Now we are in the home stretch, and anything can still happen.

AFP

John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin: Even conservative commentators believe she is "clearly out of her league."

Obama's fortunes appeared to be sinking hard in September, only to recover in the aftermath of last week's first presidential debate. Yet even as Democratic partisans (like me) begin to breathe a little easier, along comes the biggest financial crisis in 70 years. The tail of credit is now wagging the dog of politics. Maybe that's why Obama's fortunes are up. A striking new chart on RealClearPolitics shows a correlation.

The latest thrill ride on the political rollercoaster is the call for Sarah Palin to give up her candidacy. It comes not only from an obvious Obama-supporter like Newsweek commentator Fareed Zakaria, but also from a conservative columnist like Kathleen Parker, who wrote that Palin is "clearly out of her league." For the good of her country, says Parker, Palin should resign from the ticket "to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first."

Thank God some conservatives are finally admitting the outrage of McCain's cynical toying with the nominating process to gain political advantage. The more I've learned about Palin, the angrier I've become with McCain's cavalier disregard for the gravity of the choice. Even respected former Bush speechwriter David Frum told the New York Times that Palin has "pretty thoroughly proven ... that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States."

This is tough medicine for the McCain team just one day before the breathlessly awaited vice-presidential debate. Thursday night's confrontation pits the clueless Palin against the massively experienced but verbally out-of-control Joe Biden. Each, frankly, stands a chance of making a fool of herself or himself. Expectations for Palin are so low that anything close to a draw could equal a victory for her. I'm prepared to cringe with embarrassment for the full 90 minutes of the show.

I've even had a shocking thought: What would happen if, God forbid, John McCain should be taken to his heavenly reward before the election (he is 72; things happen). What then? Do Republicans wake up and admit their profound error? Or do they let Palin swing in the wind?

Whom do they throw on the ticket with her? And how could any of the possible replacements for McCain accept Palin, after all that has happened?

Having vented my intellectual disgust, I'd better share my fears. One is that Palin's policy failings pale beside her animal appeal, and that she could still be a major asset for the McCain ticket. Last night I saw TV interviews with average moms and housewives out in the heartland -- basic working class white women. They are blithely unaware of Palin's stumbles in her big TV appearances. They are aware of one thing only -- she identifies with them and they identify with her. And we know gut identification historically trumps all other calculations in political decisions, except among political elites (or maybe for them, too; after all, most of the intelligentsia identifies with Obama; he's one of them).

Another thing: I recently did a side-by-side comparison of McCain's and Obama's interviews on "60 Minutes," America's biggest public affairs TV show. By going online, instead of watching the interviews one after the other as they were broadcast, I was able to jump back and forth between the two interviews and compare their tone and style.

McCain clearly has the gut advantage; Obama has the brain advantage.

This does not augur well for Obama. Watching the two men, I found myself drawn at a human level to McCain's gruff, simple, but sincere-sounding answers -- and put off a bit by Obama's analytical, complex, long-winded answers. And that's coming from a committed Democrat! Imagine what a swing voter, an uncommitted centrist voter, might be thinking!

With McCain, you're drawn to the man and his character. With Obama, you're drawn to his thinking and the rational possibility that his ideas may be better. For a lot of people, that's a no-brainer: They will always choose the man and his character over an abstract idea, no matter how eloquently put. And, for all her shortcomings, that could still work for Sarah Palin, too. She's 100 percent gut, and clearly a lot less brain.