Desperation can do strange things to people.  In McCain's case it seems to have turned him into a performer worthy of a circus act by his ever greater shape shifting in response to Obama. 

Behold the Amazing McCain:
 
He defies perception by comparing Obama to his ideological opposite George W. Bush because, imperceptible to all but those with his fantastical powers, he finds Obama "dangerously rigid and ideological" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/16/mccain-aide-obama-is-stub_n_113098.html
 
He bends reality by actually blaming Obama for higher gas prices which as factcheck.org states, is patently absurd.http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/a_full_tank_of_nonsense.html
 
He invents astounding word play when he attempts to explain away the gaffe in his interview with Katie Couric (concerning how the surge caused the Sunni Awakening to happen, when it was really the latter that came first) by insisting that he was right if you just wring the definition of the word "surge" into the counterinSURGEncy strategy that Colonel MacFarland "initiated in Ramadi by going in, and clearing and holding in certain places.  ... " which actually did happen before the Awakening unlike the actual surge did  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/us/politics/24check.html?scp=1&sq=mccain%20surge%20counterinsurgency&st=cse
 
He cleverly balances Obama's speech in Berlin with a speech in a German sausage house located in the heartland and advertisements in small towns with the name "Berlin" in them.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/07/24/sausage/index.html
 
Using mirrors, he accuses Obama of turning his back on genocide while Armenians say that McCain is the one who is "soft" on a genocidal state and declare Obama their hero precisely because of his anti-genocide stance http://www.armeniansforobama.com/
 
He gets others to turn commonly held assumptions on their head when a surrogate suggests McCain would actually get us out of Iraq sooner than Obama even though McCain insists we must not leave without "victory" http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/mccain_surrogate_he_might_with.php
 
He dazzles with tales of "a near-apocalyptic chain of events" that would have occurred if Obama had gotten his way and the surge had never happened (artfully sidestepping the larger I-told-you-so issue of what would have occurred if Obama had gotten his way and the Iraqi war had never happened.)   Then he twists Obama's words into the "the Audacity of Hopelessness."   Finally he twisted so much he's come full circle and is agreeing with Obama that 16 months is “a pretty good timetable.” http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-McCain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
 
In fact, he is so good a creating his own reality that he invents an alternate one http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0708/Dept_of_fake_news_McCain_defeats_Clinton.html#comments