Scathing. From Les Payne, Newsday:

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Nothing in McCain's career demonstrates that his bulb has brightened. His vaunted reputation as a maverick and contrarian could just as well be attributed to a short-circuiting of his command of facts and standard operating procedures.

What about his qualifications for commander-in-chief?

As President George W. Bush has proven, any scion of a wealthy, white family can be taught to fly a jet fighter by a patient, long-suffering military flight instructor. As for getting one's plane shot out of the sky, as McCain did over North Vietnam, we need seek no analysis beyond that of Gen. Wesley Clark's.

The general's point was not that McCain isn't a war hero, the counterattack that put Clark on the defensive. It was rather that McCain's heroics have not prepared him, ipso facto, to be commander-in-chief, as the GOP candidate claims. Incidentally, Clark ranked No. 1 in his 1966 class of 579 cadets at West Point. Other knowledgeable war veterans, and I humbly include myself, know that cocky flyboy pilots like McCain, indeed, tend not to have the right stuff to be named commanders.

Furthermore, some actual commanders, Gen. William C. Westmoreland for example - as well as some commanders-in-chief, such as George W. Bush - do not have the winning stuff that makes leaders successful. In the former case, Gen. Westmoreland, who got the U.S. snookered on the battlefield in Vietnam, scored in the middle of his 1936 West Point class of 276.

As for the verbal and scholastic prowess of the current commander-in-chief, perhaps the less said, in these tumultuous times, the better. It suffices that the closer we look at the makeup of McCain, the more we find traces of Bush. Both have been given to waywardness, one born to money, the other marrying into it.

The salient point about this duo that troubles those of us who care deeply about the country is that McCain doggedly insists upon staying the Bush course. Also, it's a sure bet that McCain would continue to offer David Letterman material for his "Great Moments in Presidential History," a nightly spoof of Bush's inarticulate ramble. Can we afford any longer to ponder our sitting president each night and laugh - just to keep from crying?