Sen. John McCain’s smirky, sanctimonious, don’t-you-realize-who-I-am debate performance Jan. 30 pretty much nutshells why he never should be elected president.

Despite a strong showing on Super Tuesday, he is not qualified to lead the United States at this crucial time in our history. His debate demeanor exemplified the negatives I came to know in five years as national editor at The Arizona Republic, the largest daily newspaper in his home state.

Can you imagine how his egotistical, condescending behavior would play with world leaders, not to mention a (presumably) Democrat-controlled Congress?

While Americans consistently say the economy is a top concern, McCain doesn’t have a detailed economic plan, except to say he’d lower taxes, and would appoint former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan to head a review of the country’s tax code, “whether he is alive or dead, it doesn’t matter,” according to The Washington Post. “If he’s dead, we’ll prop him up and put dark glasses on him, like in ‘Weekend at Bernie’s.’ ”

Ha. Ha. Ha.

He jokes while the country heads to the poorhouse.

McCain’s Johnny-one-note focus on terrorism and Iraq brings to mind the Cold War fear-mongering of the middle of the 20th century, not the informed and innovative approach needed on national security issues and foreign affairs from the leader of the free world in the 21st century.

McCAIN OPPOSES ANY WITHDRAWAL DATE IN IRAQ.

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives spent, McCain opposes any withdrawal date in Iraq.

“Senator [Barack] Obama and Senator [Hillary] Clinton want to surrender,” McCain said last Saturday, campaigning in the South. “They want to wave the white flag. They want to set a date for withdrawal. My friends, that means surrender and I will never surrender as president of the United States,” McCain said, according to an Associated Press report.

People want solutions, not glibness. McCain, a survivor of five-and-a-half years in the “Hanoi Hilton,” should know better.

Time and again on the campaign trail he emphasizes he knows “how to lead.” Where’s the evidence?

McCain takes the road of expediency if he thinks it will garner him votes, first opposing Bush’s tax cuts, now saying they should be permanent. He favored a bill allowing undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, but now hardly mentions the “i” word because it doesn’t play well to the conservatives he now is pandering to.

The McCain I know is a short-tempered bully who would brook no criticism of his goals or means, who routinely dismissed or ignored legitimate inquiries from Republic reporters, and who felt no compunction about whining to the publisher over any perceived slight.

In 2006, McCain’s office flipped over a Republic website story on the senator’s infamous temper.

In response, McCain’s then-chief campaign strategist told the newspaper’s Washington reporter that he was “off the bus” if McCain ran for president. Other national media outlets ran temper stories, but their reporters were not preemptively dismissed from the campaign.

Most veteran politicians (McCain is in his fourth Senate term and was a congressman before that) understand if they have a problem, they talk to the reporter and don’t go to the publisher or make threats.

So it was galling in the debate when McCain said he’d “guarantee” the Republic would endorse him. (It did.)

I keep wondering when the real McCain will surface. But I fear he’ll fool voters all the way to the White House.

Since his quixotic run for president in 2000, McCain has fancied himself a national figure, and the national media have fed the image, consistently labeling him a “maverick.” He plays the role to the hilt.

But what has Arizona’s senior senator done for his home state?

Not much on such issues as education, health-care reform, immigration and the environment. Arizona’s housing-fueled economy now is depressed because of the subprime mortgage mess. But McCain did not seize a leadership role to fix the problem. In the debate he said, “I think that there’s some greedy people on Wall Street that perhaps need to be punished.”

After years of ignoring the border, McCain in recent years got on the bandwagon for comprehensive immigration reform.

The failed Senate bill McCain supported last year would have allowed undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. But during the Jan. 30 debate, he sidestepped a question on whether he now would vote for the bill, saying Americans are most concerned about border security and that’s his priority.

Courtship of the far right? Certainly. A demonstration of conviction and leadership? No way.

The senator has used his home state as a bully pulpit for his national aspirations. If he can’t even represent his own state, there is no reason to think he would do any better handling the exponentially more complex job of president of all the states.