CLEVELAND (MarketWatch) — Nobody outside of the media really cares if Melania Trump’s speech contains two anodyne sentences lifted from a speech by Michelle Obama.

But it speaks volumes that the Trump campaign couldn’t even put out this tiny fire for a day and a half.

At last, on Wednesday morning, the Trump people issued a statement by one of the speech-writing staff taking the blame for the error. Meredith McIver apologized for the mistake and her explanation, whether or not it is true, sounded reasonably plausible.

“ The only missing explanation was a claim that the dog had eaten Melania’s first draft of her speech. ”

That statement should have come out Monday night, when news of the plagiarized lines first broke.

Sometimes the little things tell you a lot about a campaign, like John Kerry being photographed wind surfing off Nantucket during the GOP convention in 2004, or Mitt Romney not bothering to shutter his family’s Swiss bank account until just before his 2012 presidential run. When a campaign screws up the small details, it often tells you that they’re not ready for the game. It’s as if the Super Bowl is just starting and the players don’t all have the right uniforms.

Donald Trump has many flaws, but he knows a lot about showmanship and TV. He also, presumably, knows quite a bit about running a big organization. So I figured, here in Cleveland, he would put on an impressive spectacle. But so far this has been worse, much worse, than I would have imagined.

What matters is not the trivial plagiarism in Mrs. Trump’s speech, but that the campaign spent a day issuing one ridiculous and insulting explanation after another. First they said the passages, which were almost identical, weren’t plagiarized. Then they brought “My Little Pony” into the story. Then they tried blaming the whole thing on Hillary. The only thing missing was a claim that the dog had eaten Melania’s first draft.

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Meanwhile, on TV, America’s voters have been treated to a ridiculous spectacle. You don’t have to be a Democrat or a liberal or a pointy-headed elitist to be astonished that Ben Carson was allowed to stand on the stage at Donald Trump’s convention and accuse Hillary Clinton of following a Satan worshipper.

Or that Chris Christie was allowed to conduct a Salem witch trial. (The only saving grace for the GOP here was that Christie’s speech came across in TV as extremely boring.)

Or that a speaker was allowed to lead the arena in chants of “Lock her up!”

This stuff is surreal.

Donald Trump has everything to play for. Hillary Clinton is a vulnerable candidate, and the financial markets have been too quick to assume she will win.

But if Team Trump means to conduct the rest of its general election campaign the way it has begun, Republicans are in for a very long four months.