A Town-Hall Summer

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

John McCain wants to recreate the old Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland movies about a couple of kids putting on a show in the barn. Him and Barack, barnstorming around the country. They could fly together on the same plane!

“Just two Americans running for the highest office in the greatest nation on earth!” he said enthusiastically.

McCain sent Obama a letter inviting him — negative minds might say challenging him — to do a town-hall meeting every week from now until the end of August. He made it public at a town-hall meeting in Louisiana.

Do you see a theme here?

On the plus side, it’s a good thing that somebody is trying to come up with a way to fill up the summer. If you think the primaries took too long, see how you like spending three months speculating about vice presidential candidates.

But for all the talk about McCain wanting a “higher level of discourse,” the bottom line is that he is begging to be rescued from the big problem his campaign has encountered: which is that the only thing their candidate is good at is town-hall meetings.

(Continued here.)