Many of us wrote off McCain very early in this campaign. We were thinking that his time had passed, nobody was all that interested in him anymore. The media always talks about Guiliani and Romney, with Huckabee suddenly polling well and therefore garnering media attention.

All of a sudden, McCain is getting the endorsements, perhaps the bulk of them for Republican candidates. The "Boston Herald" even declined to endorse a Democratic candidate because they felt so strongly the McCain is the one person who absolutely should be our next President.

What is going on here? Bush and his war are highly unpopular, and McCain is the one candidate who has hitched his wagon to Bush and his war as other Republicans are scrambling to distance themselves from the unpopular administration. And yet he's getting all these endorsements.

I know endorsements don't directly translate into votes, but I'm sure some voters are influenced by them, perhaps particularly those who don't do their own research into the candidates (probably most people). Endorsements also bring attention to the candidates who get them, which means the media will be more likely to cover McCain and he will be more likely to start polling higher than he has been.

Many people also still see McCain as the maverick with the straight-talk express that they saw in his earlier presidential run. They also have the impression that he's somewhat "liberal," which is far from the truth. McCain may have been joking when he sang, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann," but I do not think it is funny, and it's also a tacky and irresposible thing for an elected, or appointed, official to say. I would not want this man to become the President of the United States.