A 72 year old man does not put in back-breaking days over a nearly two year time period for the purpose of intentionally losing an election.
Yeah, I think this theory is nuts.
Now, I wouldn’t be completely shocked if there were people in his campaign who didn’t exactly beat the bushes (no pun intended) for votes. I got the impression a few times that a few people were not taking it 100% seriously. But I get that impression a lot from Republican operatives, that they treat elections like rather large, expensive sporting events.
Translation: if it was said by a republican somewhere, we assume McCain supports it unless he specifically rejects it. Even when he does, really.
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/10/10/19513/598
http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/03/10/mccain-rejects-king-comments-about-obama/
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/mccain-repudiates-hussein-obama-remarks/
But should Obama choose to say nothing when Hillary is accused of racial insensitivity … well that’s different. That’s not something he should have gotten involved in.
Two things conspired against McCain:
The war went too well and dropped off the front page. He was counting on people seeing him as a better leader.
The economy went south just after he said “the fundamentals of the economy are strong”.
Close, but you’ve got the wrong one saying “I’m too old for this shit.” 
Edit: Speaking of, that’s likely another strong reason McCain didn’t voluntarily step aside. This was probably his last chance at the Presidency. An honorable man can step aside when he knows he has a chance later on; it takes a faultless demigod to step aside when he knows he won’t have another chance. I don’t expect that of McCain. He gave it his best shot, but it wasn’t really enough.
We all got the chance to look into McCain’s eyes many times during the campaign, and what I saw there was that he really wanted it and really thought he had a chance at it. Or sometimes that he saw defeat staring him in the face and licking its chops in anticipation of feasting on his vitals. But never that he had volunteered to jump on the grenade.
I think the blame can fall equally in a few areas:
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Obama’s ground game and organization were miles ahead of anything the GOP could imagine. Instead of complacency, he was out there working it. The GOP took for granted they’d carry states like NC and IN and ignored them until very late in the game, by which time Obama’s campaign already had an excellent presence established. I called this one way back in spring, but then I saw Obama’s organization up close on his 2004 Senate campaign, so I had an inkling of what to expect.
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McCain’s inability to surround himself with people he trusted, and people who could be relied upon. It seems like there was a lot of infighting and clique-ishness in his team, with some unaware of what the others were doing. The Palin pick is a good example of this effect – some of the inner circle did not know she was the pick until right before it happened.
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McCain’s inability to learn from mistakes. It seemed like he would screw up and then lurch to another mistake. I thought after seeing his jerkish attitude in the first debate that he’d clean it up, but not so much.
Maybe you should check to see whether he in fact did not say that. It is easy to image something along the lines of…
My fellow prisoners, people say you all are nuts. And I couldn’t agree with them more. I promise to veto every beer that comes before me. And I love Fidel Castro and his beard.
The fighter jock as candidate. Thank Og we’ll never have to suffer the fighter jock as President.
That’s a good point, about the nebbish nerd I mean. It occurs to me that one of the reasons Obama won may have been the fact that nerds have become sexy.
I have no doubt that McCain wanted to win. He just made some bad decisions.
McCain knew it was a long shot. The Republican Primaries split the base pretty hardcore. While McCain appealed to moderates, the far right conservatives had already been tearing him apart trying to get Romney elected. From the get-go the campaign was reluctant and sluggish.
Planets aligned and the Democrats got a candidate with more charisma than a box of rocks. Bush’s unpopularity made a presidential endorsement a death sentence, and when the economy tanked the Pubs were left holding the pieces.
Why was he behaving so erratically? His whole campaign was a Hail Mary.
Sorry, but it was more “Its A Wonderful Iife” with Barack as Jimmy Stewart and his wife Michele playing the Donna Reed part.
It has John McCain as ‘warped, frustrated’ Old Man Potter.
It has Hillary as Violet Biggs: the fallen woman forced to leave town (but doing so in the most melodramatic way possible, but finally throwing some money into the hat at the end).
Biden would be Clarence.
Giuliani would be Nick the Bartender.
Romney still would be complaining about his grandfather’s tree.
Oprah as Sam Wainright
Colin Powell would be Joe Bailey
Charlie Gibson & George Stephanopoulos as Bert the Cop & Ernie the Cab Driver…
(Palin was being yanked into a Vice van screaming in ‘McCainville’)
But Obama’s a clean cut kid and he’s been to college too. And in comes Sarah lookin’ just like Tony Perkins…
I think that political campaigns work best with someone the public isn’t terribly familiar with, so they can define who he or she is and plan the messaging accordingly (See Clinton, Bush, Obama). With McCain, it was someone already well-known and ill-suited to being defined by a campaign, therefore much confusion ensued.
hee hee hee…just adds a whole 'nother layer of weirdness when you catch the reference doesn’t it? 
If Romney had such a base of support why wasn’t he picked as his running mate?
Yep. They did everything but call him an unpatriotic doctor rotten commie rat.