These days, is there any other political parlor game that can possibly compete with 'What's the Matter with John McCain?'

It's easy, it's fun, it's wholesome entertainment for the whole family. It's bipartisan. It's sweeping the nation. And its popularity derives from the simple formulation that there are not, really, any wrong answers, since no one really knows for sure just what in the hell is wrong with the man.

Pick a card, any card: inept improvisation, ordinary incompetence, chaos theory in action, revealed ignorance, message confusion, deliberate bedazzlement, random error, clinical depression and paranoid frustration, just plain senility, or perhaps some combination of a few or all. Who knows? And you can write up your own explanatory card, too, because we're all equals in punditland.

There is, of course, strong yet inconclusive evidence for the senility argument, which began in earnest when McCain persisted in his geometric confusions over Sunnis, Shiites, Iranians and al Qaeda. Those, truly, were Who's-on-first? moments we'll never forget, although John may have by now. Since then, Mr. McCain has repeatedly reconstructed the quondam nation of Czechoslovakia, installed Vladimir Putin on Germany's throne, and magically redrawn Pakistan's border.

In defense of her boss' fundamental coherence, communications director Jill Hazelbaker begins convincingly but ends rather weakly: "When you engage with reporters from 8:30 a.m. till 8 at night, you're bound to make a gaffe," she told reporters [1] in what should have been her alpha-to-omega argument. But, unfortunately, she went on. "I'd encourage anyone who has concerns about John McCain's age to join him on the campaign trail. He keeps an exhausting schedule -- often visiting two or three states a day -- answering dozens of questions from voters and the media along the way."

Sure, everybody makes gaffes. We get that. But the problem with her follow-up explanation was its implicit admission that even this job is a tad too much for the old boy. If we think it's bad now, Ms. Hazelbaker was saying, in effect, just wait till McCain is facing the even more rigorous pressures of the presidency.

Still, what worries far more is the non-gaffiness of the McCain campaign -- that increasing welter of conspicuous non sequiturs and downright laughable, incoherent contentions which are almost surely premeditated.

Just yesterday, for instance, McCain (one is bound to presume) seriously suggested that the recent $10 drop in oil prices was the result of George Bush's reversal of the long-standing offshore drilling ban. Presto. Bam. Just like that. No world-market complications, no speculative contortions: just John offering a solution, George wisely following up, and within days we're on our way back to 1971. That's beyond demagoguery. That's derangement.

Which came right on the heels of the Anbar/Sunni/Surge flap. Here, there is no question that when Mr. McCain said that "the surge ... began the Anbar awakening," he really believed it. In his mind, it wasn't hype, but history.

When the proper chronology was pointed out to McCain, his studied riposte was that "a surge is really a counterinsurgency made up of a number of components.... I'm not sure people understand that 'surge' is part of a counterinsurgency." I'm still trying to wrap my brain around that one -- and again, that was his studied response -- nevertheless any initial confusion was only ours, my friends. So now that, as they say, is his story and he's sticking to it, no matter how insultingly.

And let's not forget that earlier this week McCain seemed to nullify virtually his entire campaign's raison d'etre. When asked at the Bush family compound in Maine if "American troops could be fully withdrawn ... from Iraq by the end of 2010," McCain casually answered, "Oh, I think they could be largely withdrawn, as I’ve said."

As he has said? Well, as the NY Times said, "Previously, he had envisioned that in a McCain administration, most troops would be out of Iraq by 2013" -- and before that "vision," perhaps 2113.

Here was yet another puzzler, same day: "Mr. McCain dismissed the notion that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, who in recent days suggested he agreed with Mr. Obama on the idea of withdrawing most American troops by 2010, had undercut Mr. McCain’s opposition to a withdrawal timetable.

"But," as the Times continued in what is now merely a cut-and-paste formulation, "Mr. McCain did not explain precisely why he thought he had not been undercut."

As if given a chance, he could, or would.

But back to our parlor game and my choice for 'What's the Matter with John McCain?' I'd have to go with creeping emotional meltdown, which, if we get really lucky in this game, will, before November, itself transmogrify into an unprecedented, monumental campaign crack-up.

In short, we ain't seen nothin' yet. That's my guess.