So bad was John McCain's speech on Tuesday night, even the pundits on Fox conceded that Obama sounded a lot better, and that McCain would surely "improve," as Fred Barnes put it.

There's so much to improve on, it's a good thing the primaries are finally over and the general election has started (even though Hillary hasn't admitted it).

McCain himself listed some things that need improving in his speech in New Orleans. Government, he said, should "respond quickly and effectively to a natural catastrophe." For example, "We should be able to deliver bottled water to dehydrated babies."

Grover Norquist might take issue with that idea, but the New Orleans crowd seemed to agree that bottled water delivery to dehydrated babies after a hurricane falls within the extremely narrow Republican confines of acceptable government intervention.

McCain, perhaps fearing he'd gone too far, immediately and awkwardly segued into bashing Barack Obama for proposing that government do more to help people. It was a stark illustration of the challenge that faces the Republican candidate after the catastrophic failure of his party over the last eight years.

He tried using humor, forcing a grin and mocking Obama for preposterous proposals like universal health care, higher corporate taxes, and a focus on solving economic problems at home instead of spending billions on a disastrous war abroad.

"I'm surprised that a young man has bought into so many failed ideas," McCain said of Obama. "He seems to think government is the answer to every problem. . . . That attitude created the unresponsive bureaucracies that failed us in the first place."

Actually, it was Bush and his cronies' screw-public-service, give-jobs-to-your-unqualified-friends attitude that created the bureaucracy that failed New Orleans. FEMA under Bush was, anyone who paid any attention knows, an unmitigated disaster. Not so under President Clinton.

Karl Rove, Brit Hume, and the gang on Fox, like McCain, seemed reduced to punchy laughter over the problem McCain faces persuading voters that eight years of Republican rule is just not enough. Barnes tried explaining that, while Obama's proposals to do something about the mortgage crisis and health care might sound good at first glance, as soon as people "dig deeper," they will realize that more liberal government solutions are a bad idea. Mort Kondracke, who has written movingly of his late wife's battle with Parkinson's Disease, had to shout over Hume to point out that Americans actually do want universal health care and are fed up with the free-market approach to addressing this human need.

This, indeed, is the challenge for the Republicans: The country is solidly against them on most of the pressing issues of the day.

Lest he be too closely tied to his own party's President, McCain denounced Obama for trying to "drum into people's heads" that he is somehow connected to the Bush Administration. Nothing could be further from the truth, said the Senator who voted with Bush 95 percent of the time over the last year. On Iraq, McCain even asserted authorship of Bush’s current policy: "I called for the change in strategy that is now, at last, succeeding."

News flash: We're winning the Iraq War! Lest you be deceived by the mounting death toll and lack of any discernable progress in bringing the Iraqis closer to a safe, democratic country, McCain asserts that we are now on the road to victory.

Considering that there are five months to go before election day, that "mission accomplished" analysis will surely come back to haunt him.

If the Clintons don't give him a big helping hand, McCain is going to have a very hard time beating Obama.