I cannot get over how different the two campaigns are in the final week of the race.

Look at Obama: he is re-articulating the main points and themes of his entire campaign. The “Are you better off/will you be better off?” ad. He appears composed, confident but not cocky.

And McCain? Hard to tell what he’s saying because most of the noise from the GOP side of the field is stemming from infighting within the party. The off-script controversy involving Palin could not be coming at a worse time. And maybe, just maybe, it would have flown a bit more under the radar had McCain campaign officials not thrown coals on the fire by giving anonymous quotes to the press confirming that there was indeed bad blood within the campaign between McCain’s people and Palin’s people.

By confirming the fued, McCain’s people have projected two of the worst images a campaign can have: a lack of leadership and a lack of organization. The fact that this is all going down eight days before the vote makes it even worse.

At the end of last week with Obama off the trail for a couple of days, I thought McCain had a golden opportunity to make up a lot of ground. He was the only game in town. Obama surrogates were still carrying out his message, but the lack of visibility for Obama himself gave McCain a couple of days to increase his presence, so to speak. By the end of the weekend, though, the stories of in-fighting had come out. McCain’s opportunity was lost.

IMO, the McCain campaign has 2-3 days to put out these fires. If, by the end of this week, we are still hearing as much about the cost of Palin’s wardrobe as we are the cost of McCain’s economic plan, I don’t think there is enough time to recover.