Essentially, what pops is saying is this: had Obama demeaned himself by accepting McCain's town hall meeting stunt, McCain would have refrained from injecting jumbo vials of rancid GOP sleaze into the tenor of this campaign. The truth is, of course, McCain was going to venture down that path regardless of what Obama did. Because reality has a strong anti-McCain/Bush bias, his road to victory depends on false smears and voter ignorance.

What's telling is how McCain blames his victim. In McCain's mind, it's Obama's fault that he's attacking him with verbal diarrhea. This is a classic defense mechanism for people with narcissistic personality disorder (NDP) known as "projection." Note the uncanny resemblance between McCain 's behavior and this description of projection:

When narcissists slander and calumniate you, they have two objectives. One is projection, and the other is to muddy a bright spot in your character with whatever slander or calumny they're projecting at you. It's as though any shine on your image diminishes the glow of their glory.

Don't take my word for it: test a narcissist. Praise someone before a group and see what happens. The next day the narcissist launches a smear campaign against that praised person.

This is, of course, the mentality of the rapist, who must tear others "down off that pedestal." The narcissist just does the deed in a non-sexual way.

Now, you'd think it would be hard to accomplish both objectives -- projection and smearing -- at the same time. But it's uncanny how narcissists manage to do so! It's all in the way they word their "line" on you. They are glib and amazingly adept at killing two birds with one stone: they not only ditch one of their faults, they muddy one your virtues in the process.

Note that in doing this, the narcissist isn't attacking your faults and shortcomings: she is attacking your virtues and accomplishments. Consequently, when she is conducting a campaign of character assassination against someone, the arrows she shoots never hit one of that person's real flaws.

The result is something like Dr. Frankenstein accomplished with body parts. A chimera. The narcissist's false image contains the virtuous qualities in other people's characters, and their images have had those virtuous qualities replaced with the flaws in the narcissist's character. In other words, the narcissist steals your virtues and dumps on you her faults.

In doing so, the narcissist is stealing your identity, pulling an identity switch with you, piecemeal.

Malignant narcissism projects to pull an image switch.

It's a kind of magic, an illusion created with nothing but words, which can warp perceptions by making anything of anything.

Sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it?

According to the Mayo Clinic, NPD is characterized by "conceited, boastful or pretentious" behavior and a false sense of entitlement and superiority. From the Mayo Clinic's website:

And when you don't receive the special treatment to which you feel entitled, you may become very impatient or angry. You may also seek out others you think have the same special talents, power and qualities -- people you see as equals. You may insist on having "the best" of everything -- the best car, athletic club, medical care or social circles, for instance.

But underneath all this grandiosity often lies a very fragile self-esteem. You have trouble handling anything that may be perceived as criticism. You may have a sense of secret shame and humiliation. And in order to make yourself feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and efforts to belittle the other person to make yourself appear better.

This above blockquote may explain the conflict between McCain's celebrity digs at Obama and McCain's failed efforts to artificially inflate the crowd estimates of his own rallies.

The definition for NPD provided by the Mayo Clinic matches closely to what we already know about McCain:

Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration. They believe that they're superior to others and have little regard for other people's feelings. But behind this mask of ultra-confidence lies a fragile self-esteem, vulnerable to the slightest criticism.

Of course, I'm not faulting McCain for having this personality disorder, but I know enough about his condition to feel the same chills his Republican colleagues experienced at the thought of him becoming POTUS:

WASHINGTON - Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, who has known Senator John McCain for more than three decades, on Wednesday endorsed Mitt Romney for president.

Cochran said his choice was prompted partly by his fear of how McCain might behave in the Oval Office.

"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine," Cochran said about McCain by phone.

I hope McCain gets the help he needs.