McCain Still Waiting for His Turn at Good Luck

McCain also made a series of small gaffes this week, referring to the "Iraq-Pakistan border" and later to the country of "Czechoslovakia," neither of which exist. And his mistaken comment yesterday that the troops increase in Iraq began a movement called the Awakening, which started months before the military buildup, forced a day of explanations from his campaign.

McCain's camp attempted to seize the spotlight, and maybe change his luck, this week after columnist Robert D. Novak suggested that an announcement of a vice presidential pick may- be imminent. It wasn't, but aides dragged it out for more than a day -- even after Novak said that the campaign leaked the rumor and that he may have been used to try to grab attention from Obama.

McCain, who has been known to carry good-luck talismans -- a pair of L.L. Bean shoes, a feather, a flattened penny -- has had fortune smile on him now and again. The New York Times handed the senator from Arizona a public relations gift this week by rejecting an article he had submitted to the editorial page to counter one the paper ran from Obama last week, making it easy to bash the liberal media.

And on his recent trip to Colombia, McCain was in the right place at the right time as the government there announced a raid in which long-held hostages were released.

Despite his recent problems, McCain remains just six percentage points behind Obama, according to an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll released last night, unchanged from the survey's results a month ago.

Still, more pitfalls lie ahead.

As both campaigns look toward their conventions in late August and early September, observers have noted more than once that Obama's speech happens to be scheduled for Aug. 28, the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. McCain's speech, on the other hand, will fall on Sept. 4, the opening night of the NFL season, which features a game between the Washington Redskins and the Super Bowl champion New York Giants.

Staff writer Robert Barnes contributed to this report.