BY ORIN GORDON

JOHN MCCAIN seems to have decided that being condescending is a useful political tool against Barack Obama. He hasn't gone as far as patting the younger man on the head and calling him "youth man", but his tone leaves no doubt that he thinks that the Illinois senator is too green to govern.

It could point to something else and I think that something else is that McCain is acting like a man rattled. Not because he fears Obama – you don't stay in politics for as long as the 71-year old senator has unless you have big reserves of self belief. He believes he can beat Obama. But he's looking rattled I think because Obama makes him act against his better nature.

Let's rewind the clock to June 3, Obama's big night when he secured the Democratic nomination. What did McCain do? He scheduled a big spoiler speech right in the middle of prime time when his Democratic opponent was moving steadily towards his magic number and history.

Much has been made of McCain's poor delivery on the night and his tepid backdrop. That was secondary. The speech itself signified bad manners, as Drew Westen wrote in the Huffington Post blog at the time:"For a man who spoke with the word 'honour' on hand-held placards all around him, it was a dishonorable thing to do.

"Presumptive nominees do not typically deliver prime time speeches just before their rival becomes their general-election opponent to try to inoculate against both his message and his moment. Democratic leaders did not deliver a prime time speech excoriating McCain an hour before he clinched the Republican nomination.

As I recall, Barack Obama congratulated him. That's how gentlemen have typically responded to their rivals' ascension to the nomination."

Westen could have said too that that's how people who are rattled act.

This week the New York Times turned down a McCain response to an Obama op-ed piece on Iraq and asked him to rework it.

"The article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq," explained the editor.

"It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory – with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the senator's Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan."

The Times played it down, making clear that it does not think the refusal is a big deal. But the incident could suggest that McCain had not been as cool and considered in his response and gave a heat of the moment response to Obama. A close reading of it would suggest that the younger man got under his skin. Google both articles and decide for yourself.

At the start of the year and the start of the nomination process when the Republican field was wide when three or four of the candidates stood a chance, McCain seemed more relaxed and on his game.

At a debate in which the others tried to skate around the issue of whether waterboarding is torture, he came out plainly and said it was, and that it had no place in American policy. There were stories of him being candid to the point of bluntness with travelling reporters – being warm, funny, engaging, spontaneous and compared to others in the rough and tumble of politics, polite.

Watching this election season close up, my take is that McCain is not the first to feel rattled by the relative newcomer. Hillary Clinton's missteps, from her spoken-out-of-turn Kennedy assassination comment to her "non concession" speech the night Obama locked up the nomination, suggested that he threw her off her stride.

But why does he also rile his opponents? Apart from the fact that they find the freshman senator to be a tougher political operator than they'd thought at first, my sense is that they genuinely feel he's too green – not ready – for the big job that is the American presidency, and they're exasperated that he's beating them.

That could explain senator McCain's condescending tone, particularly when the debate comes around to national security.

McCain has regularly implied Obama didn't know what he was talking about in Iraq, one reason being that unlike him he hadn't been there in two years.

It's too simplistic to say that Obama's mini world tour was in response to being regularly painted by McCain as naive on foreign affairs. But the more comfortable he looks with the troops or as a statesman, the more easily he deflects McCain's remarks.
*Orin Gordon is a London-based Caribbean journalist who works with the BBC, and has been covering the United States primaries. He blogs at www.gyaff.blogspot.com