[T]he more he dispenses his impromptu wisdom, the more he sounds like, well, a rookie senator whose collective experience derives from the utopianism of The Harvard Law Review, the gravy-train of Chicago entitlement politics, and the world view of Trinity Church.

Yet, the more his handlers treat him like fossilized amber, the less experience he gains, guaranteeing that on almost every rare ex tempore moment he will suggest something that doesn't compute—that he might be president for 10 years, or that we need a civilian version of the Pentagon with the same $500 billion annual budget, or that someone like a Centcom commander like Petraeus doesn't have his strategic comprehensive view, or that the Anbar awakening and the Surge were not, at least in part, connected

Except that McCain has managed to squander whatever advantage this might give to him. He is no "rookie senator" -- he's served in the House and Senate for most of Obama's lifetime -- yet still manages to function as a one-man gaffe machine: confusing Sunnis with Shiites, confusing Sudan with Somalia, confidently opining on the nonexistent Afghanistan-Iraq border, and identifying Vladimir Putin as the president of Germany. How well do those things, compute, Victor?

Since the main selling point of McCain's candidacy is his purported experience in foreign policy, such verbal flubs will inevitably hurt him more than they will Obama.