I think there are probably techniques that you can use to successfully sell dogshit to people. I’m not sure what those techniques are, but I know that if they exist they will do certain things. First, they’ll successfully convince people that what they’re buying is not, in fact, dogshit. They’ll call it something else. And they’ll also have to disguise the trademark smell and overall unappetizing appearance of dogshit. In any case, I’m pretty sure that John McCain’s campaign is very busy trying to master these techniques, but I don’t think it is going very well.

I can feel their pain because I’ve seen dogshit for sale before. I remember, for example, Al Gore’s campaign for the presidency. Gore’s consultants became convinced that they could manage Al Gore by obsessing over everything he did. How can we make this guy stop sighing and rolling his eyes? Can we hire a ballet or yoga instructor to get him to swivel his torso independently of his head? How do we get him to talk like a regular guy instead of a pedantic asshole? By the time they got done tinkering with Al Gore he was no longer a full independent human being with free will. He displayed three totally different and incompatible personalities in the three debates. Al Gore started out with glaring faults as a candidate and wound up like a robot with a malfunctioning CPU.

John McCain is going through a similar process.

To better compete, Mr. McCain is undergoing a subtle but marked transition as a political performer, said aides and people who have watched him. As part of a staff shakeup that was announced Tuesday, he brought in a new adviser — Greg Jenkins, a former White House official and Fox News producer — who will oversee the producing and staging of Mr. McCain’s events. Mr. Jenkins is considered an expert at political stagecraft, oversaw many of President Bush’s appearances and served as executive director of the 2004 inaugural committee.

Mr. McCain is working closely with aides like Brett O’Donnell, a former debate consultant for Mr. Bush, to improve his speech and performance. He is working to limit his verbal tangents and nonverbal tics. He is speaking less out of the sides of his mouth, which can produce a wiseguy twang reminiscent of the Penguin from the Batman stories, and he is relying less on his favorite semantic crutch — the phrase “my friends” — which he used repeatedly in his campaign appearances. He also appears to be trying to exercise restraint, advisers and campaign observers say, when speaking off the cuff, wisecracking in town meetings and criticizing his opponent. In recent weeks, for example, Mr. McCain seems to have reined in the sarcasm he has directed at Mr. Obama. (In May, for example, he said of his opponent, “With his very, very great lack of experience and knowledge of the issues, he’s been very successful.”)

It’s true that John McCain needs to stop opening every third sentence with ‘My friends’, but this kind of tinkering isn’t going to help much. John McCain’s biggest problem is that his policies are the political equivalent of dogshit. To get people to focus on something other than his policies, it is necessary to get them to focus on the candidate’s personality. Unfortunately, John McCain doesn’t have a personality. He’s an asshole. Even most of his Republican colleagues in the Senate think he is an asshole. But assholes can have endearing qualities. For example, they’re often pretty good at making jokes at other people’s expense. This often involves unhealthy doses of sarcasm. If you want to let John McCain shine, you need to let him be himself. Cutting out his sarcasm is not going to get it done. John McCain’s old buddy Mike Murphy understands this:

“I think the depressingly self-absorbed McCain campaign machine needs to get out of the way,” said Mike Murphy, a longtime friend and media adviser who has no role in the current operation but who still talks to Mr. McCain every few days. “They need to just let McCain be McCain.”

They really do need to do this. The John McCain that people know and love needs to be let out of his shackles.

Ask John Cornyn:

“[Expletive] you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room,” shouted McCain at Cornyn.

Or Thad Cochran:

“The thought of [McCain] being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Cochran said about McCain by phone. “He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”

Or his wife, Cindy McCain:

“At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, ‘You’re getting a little thin up there,'” Schechter writes. “McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, ‘At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.’

Yes, McCain was an aviator, but he still served in the Navy and people like that sailor-talk. It makes no sense to try to stifle McCain. The only thing remotely likable about him is his willingness to tell people off. No one likes his policies, not even his base. He isn’t going to win people over with his speechmaking. But if he tells enough people to fucking shove it, he just might convince a plurality of Americans to vote for him.