What is the deal with the McCain campaign?

Not many people I know are Republican operatives, and it would be kinda rude to ask the one who is, but what the hell is the McCain campaign doing?

Lindsey Graham, a guy in the inner circle if ever there was one, comes out and promises strong new language on taxes, but none is forthcoming. The candidate gets his first jolt of positive press in ages by scolding the crazy-cat lady who called Obama "an Arab," and then today turns around and declines to distance himself from a comparison of Obama to Osama bin Laden. And this is all while fighting a rearguard action against Bill Kristol, who was, deliciously, human anchor Sarah Palin's biggest champion. (The only bad thing about a Pfotenhauer-Kristol Smackdown is that it's never bloody enough. Oh and there's Kristol flying off the top turnbuckle with a devastating Knee-o-con on an unsuspecting but richly deserving Tucker Bounds! This is the kind of carnage they should make Pay-Per-View.)

I have to believe that the people running the McCain campaign are at least a little bit good at what they do. I'm not just going to settle on "Because they're total hacks that can't do anything right" as an explanation. But any secret strategy in an encrypted file on Steve Schmidt's laptop must involve doing a lot of stuff that doesn't make immediate sense.

Update:
Ambinder is harsh: "It's never good to overpromise to Mike Allen on Saturday, back track a little on Sunday, fail to give Lindsey Graham the message, whet everyone's appetites, offer new rhetoric Monday, throw your own campaign under the bus, facilitate your burned surrogates' leaking to the New York Times, and have nothing to put up against your opponents' four new policy proposals."