FOR a fleeting moment, the old John McCain was back on form, wise-cracking, poking fun and revealing himself to be one of the great pre-emptive joke tellers of American politics.

Looking every inch the naval war hero, the maverick senator-turned-presidential candidate seduced a well-heeled audience at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel and even emerged unscathed from an encounter with late-night chat show host David Letterman, whose wrath he had earned for cancelling an earlier appearance.

All too briefly, the death-watch of Senator McCain's scatter-gun campaign was put on hold as true believers had their hopes renewed that he could turn things around. Democrats, already giddy with excitement about Barack Obama's stunning position in the opinion polls, got a sickening feeling that there was still a chance old McCain might return to form and snatch a third successive Republican victory.

But all that was a sideshow to a tumultuous week, a moment of traditional respite in the dog-eat-dog final weeks of the race for the White House. An interlude when Senators McCain and Obama took take time away from the fray to have dinner at a posh hotel and swap some barbed jokes, mostly about themselves.

Mr McCain's sparkling performance at the Alfred E Smith dinner, held to honour the first US Catholic to run for the presidency, banished the crotchety and impatient image which had dominated voters' television screens in recent weeks.

For openers, Mr McCain declared that he had sacked his senior team and that "all of their positions will now be held by a man named Joe the Plumber". He went on to poke fun at a tricky moment during one of the presidential debates when he referred to Mr Obama as "that one". "He doesn't mind at all," Mr McCain said. "In fact, he even has a pet name for me: George Bush."

The latest and liveliest of the three presidential debates on Wednesday saw Senator McCain jump on the story of 'Joe the Plumber' -- the Ohio handyman called Joe Wurzelbacher who confronted Mr Obama on the streets of Toledo last Sunday and questioned the Democrat's plan to raise taxes for anyone earning more than $250,000 (€186,000) a year.

Mr McCain said Mr Wurzelbacher symbolised everything that was wrong with Mr Obama's proposals to "spread the wealth around". But to his huge embarrassment, it later emerged that Mr Wurzelbacher was a tax defaulter who did not have a plumbing licence and earned just $40,000 a year, which entitled him to a tax cut under Senator Obama's plans.

The debate was Mr McCain's last big chance to shatter what Republicans have always said is Mr Obama's glass jaw of inexperience. Instead, the Republican was judged to have been irascible and tetchy, while the smooth-as-silk Democrat counter-punched effectively every time he was attacked.

In this made-for-TV election race, physical appearances matter. Mr McCain's awkwardness contrasted sharply with his opponent's graciousness, even when faced with a blistering attack over his acquaintance with William Ayers, the former leader of the radical left-wing organisation the Weather Underground, which launched a domestic bombing campaign in the 1960s.

THE battering Mr McCain gave Mr Obama was just what staunch Republicans were looking for, but swing voters were turned off by their bickering in the middle of a financial crisis. Senator McCain's solutions for America's economic woes seemed to many like a retread of President Bush's failed policies.

When Mr McCain responded angrily to Mr Obama's jibe that voters were being offered another Bush term, his responses -- about cutting taxes and reducing government bureaucracy in order to create jobs -- simply repeated a Republican mantra that voters have decided needs changing.

At the Waldorf, however, Mr McCain showed what might have been had the economic misfortunes of the past month not been so calamitous. He even had a ready answer for Joe Wurzelbacher's misfortunes, saying: "What they don't know is that Joe the Plumber recently signed a very lucrative contract with a wealthy couple to handle all the work on all seven of their houses."

The reference, of course, was to his faux pas in the summer when he was unable to recall how many homes he and his wife owned at a time when many Americans were having theirs repossessed.

Behind the scenes, even senior aides admit his campaign is at its lowest ebb after one of the toughest weeks imaginable. As a result, they are hunting for what they call a "narrow-victory scenario" in an ever-diminishing number of states.

The best Mr McCain can hope for is to hold on to some of the states George Bush won in 2004. The surge of enthusiasm the Republican enjoyed after appointing Sarah Palin as his running mate has been eradicated by the financial turmoil and Mr Bush's diminished reputation. (© Independent News Service, London)

EVEN loyal states are jumping ship, page 32

- Leonard Doyle