John McCain may be right by removing four top staffers to resurrect his sagging presidential campaign. But it’s difficult not to suspect McCain’s deeper problem may be McCain.

After the 2000 election, Senator McCain became a sort of maverick Republican in the Senate, co-sponsoring the Kennedy-McCain Immigration Bill, brokering deals with Democrats on judges and co-sponsoring the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation – stands which put him at odds with other Republicans. Then as the presidential campaign neared he changed directions, mending fences with President Bush and courting conservatives, including evangelicals he’d attacked during his 2000 campaign. Then he changed directions, again, by supporting the latest immigration bill. His zigzags – left on immigration, right on the war, left again on immigration – may be signs of McCain’s independent mindedness. But they may also be the reason for his sagging presidential fortunes. His stand on immigration probably did more harm to his campaign than any number of tactical errors by his staff.

Ideologically, McCain now seems trapped between Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson. Giuliani’s taking the votes McCain needs from moderates. Thompson’s quickly solidifying conservatives, especially in the south.

That leaves McCain in a box, bleeding on both flanks; strategically, he has to find a way out to eclipse either Giuliani with moderates or Thompson with conservatives. Unless he does, changing his staff may be the equivalent of treating the symptoms and not the disease.

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