Apparently the McCain campaign completely freaked out over this comment from Obama:
BLITZER: He also is going after you now, today, the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence. He says you’re not necessarily endorsing policies that would be good for Israel.
He says this, for example: “I think it’s very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States. I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas’ worst nightmare. Senator Obama is favored by Hamas. I think people can make judgments accordingly.”
OBAMA: Yes, this — this is offensive.
And I think it’s disappointing, because John McCain always says, well, I’m not going to run that kind of politics. And then to engage in that kind of smear, I think, is unfortunate, particularly since my policy towards Hamas has been no different than his.
I have said that they are a terrorist organization, that we should not negotiate with them unless they recognize Israel, renounce violence and unless they’re willing to abide by previous accords between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And, so, for him to toss out comments like that, I think, is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination.
Here is the freak-out from the McCain campaign:
To: Interested Parties
From: Mark Salter, Senior Advisor
Date: May 8, 2008
Re: Senator Obama’s Attack Today
First, let us be clear about the nature of Senator Obama’s attack today: He used the words ‘losing his bearings’ intentionally, a not particularly clever way of raising John McCain’s age as an issue. This is typical of the Obama style of campaigning.
Kind of funny, since the phrase “losing his bearings” is not one I would associate with age. Not to mention, it wasn’t the first time Obama used the term bearings in that interview:
BLITZER: Are there members, justices right now upon who you would model, you would look at? Who do you like?
OBAMA: Well, you know, I think actually Justice Breyer, Justice Ginsburg are very sensible judges.
I think that Justice Souter, who was a Republican appointee, is a sensible judge. What you’re looking for is somebody who is going to apply the law where it’s clear. Now, there’s going to be those 5 percent of cases or 1 percent of cases where the law isn’t clear. And the judge then has to bring in his or her own perspectives, his ethics, his or her moral bearings.
Obama wasn’t talking about McCain’s age, as anyone would tell you, but the McCain campaign freaked out about it as if he had. This may be just them doing some pre-emptive work on the age issue, or it may be an attempt to bring the race down into the gutter before it even starts so the Republican operatives and 527’s have license to say whatever they want (which, mind you, they will anyway), but it does show they are sensitive about the age issue.
The funny thing is that Obama isn’t going to have to reference age at all for it to be an issue. All he is going to have to do is stand next to McCain, and the issue will undoubtedly arise, and that is not even taking into account the caricatures that will be created in the comedy world- SNL will be particularly brutal.
*** Update ***
I missed this response from the Obama campaign:
An Obama campaign spokesman shot back: “Clearly losing one’s bearings has no relation to age, given this bizarre rant that Mark Salter just sent out.”
As noted in the comments, the one plus of the last few months of the Clinton Obama cagematch has been that the Obama campaign is used to dealing with the “feigned outrage” mode of campaigning.
4tehlulz
HEY GUYZ Thanks for bringing that up so I don’t have to.
KBYE /Obama
Zifnab
Wow. Good thing McCain doesn’t have a reputation for being a hothead or a rash actor. Otherwise, lashing out over a few words taken out of context might make his campaign look like it was going senile.
cleek
McCain scores an early victory in the campaign against the radical strawman army.
well done, Lt. StBBQ !
Jake
Right, not to mention the fact that he’s what – 6 inches taller than McCain?
One of the reasons Clinton’s fought so hard is because she knows just how weak a candidate John McCain is. Now, hopefully the rest of the nation will come around to the realization that the Democratic primary was the only race that mattered.
Shygetz
Wow, that line of argument is so OLD. Why does McCain keep using such OLD and TIRED strategies. Can’t he tell that the voters have had it with the OLD ways of campaigning? McCain needs to replace his OLD advisors with people who can keep up with the new politics McCain claims to embrace.
OLD.
JGabriel
‘Losing his bearings’ vs. ‘clear who Hamas wants’.
I think McCain wins the Ugly Contest here.
Which means, Salter has no ground to stand on for complaint.
And by the way, I thought Salter said he’d leave the McSame campaign if Obama is the nominee. Did he change his mind about attacking Obama?
.
TR
McCain 2008: You Kids Get Off My Damn Lawn!
dmsilev
You’ve got to love the Obama campaign’s response to McCain. Via TPM,
This must be the “keep prodding them into saying stupid things” strategy, and it seems to be working.
-dms
nightjar
Well, at least Obama was more magnanimous that I would have been.
Chris
I imagine that after months of campaigning against Hillary Clinton, Obama is used to the “feigned-outrage” school of campaigning. This, after all, being the same logic dictating that Obama using the word “Periodically” was some terrible sexist smear.
I just wonder if McCain is going to be as good as Hillary at druming up all the sturm and drang over these perceived slights. The bright side to this is that the more John McCain engages in this sort of politics, the more damage it does to his media-enabled fabrication that he’s some rough and tumble political maverick.
joe
The issue of McCain’s age didn’t occur to me at all, until the McCain campaign brought it up.
Which reminds me: that guy is really fucking old.
I think we need a president who can turn the engine crank, open the choke, flip up the rumble seat, and get this country moving down the dirt road of freedom.
joe
Barack Obama = Boston Red Sox
Hillary Clinton = Cleveland Indians
John McCain = Colorado Rockies
I think it’s great that the Rockies won the pennant. Seriously, they should be proud. To go on a winning streak like that after they were so far out of it is an impressive achievement.
yet another jeff
Heh, methinks they doth protest too much. It doesn’t sound like the campaign is really worried about how McCAAAAAAIINN!!! appears to be losing it lately…getting this defensive over nothing tells me that the staffers are seeing some problems with McCAAAAAIINN and are worried that he won’t keep it together.
And since when has it not been ok to point out that the GOP is running a guy that was a teenager when Eisenhower was president? “Typical of the Obama style” Great, p.luk is writing their campaign memos now…
John Cole
You are thinking of Mark MacKinnon or however you spell it.
jack fate
Welp, considering that most people McCain’s age are retired, semi-retired and/or collecting Social Security; age is an issue. This is probably one of the most intense jobs in the world. How many presidents have started with color in their hair and 4 short years later it’s white?
Jake
I think you want to make the analogy to the 2004 Series, actually. Hillary’s campaign is the 2004 New York Yankees. The nomination was hers to lose, and she fucking blew it.
Dennis - SGMM
We’re seeing a preview of the McCain campaign’s general election strategy. McCain will try to push the image of himself as the experienced, steely-eyed, straight-talking maverick while his spokespeople will whine “Ageism!” every time he’s criticized. Sound familiar?
Jen
The McCain campaign strategy:
1. Fuck all y’all, anyway!
2. ?????
3. Victory!
Thanks, South Park!
Bootlegger
John Stewart very politely put McCain in a logical box Wednesday night over the Hamas/Obama nonissue. McCain repeated his claim that Hamas supports Obama and that this measn something. Then Stewart said it was probably more meaningful that they hated Bush and his war so bad they probably wanted more of the same because it was great for recruiting. McCain shot back that they didn’t have any trouble recruiting because they actually just hate all of us and our way of live. To which Stewart responded, then they must hate Obama as well.
You could see the gears spinning in McCain’s head as he realized he walked into that paradox and thats when he blurted out that he would be Hamas’ worse nightmare.
Of course Hamas’ worse nightmare would be if Iran and the US made nice with each other and the Iranians cut off Hamas, but who would have the wisdom and forsight to want to engage the Persians? Oh yeah, that young whippersnapper.
Pug
It was nice of the McCain campaign to link an unrelated phrase like “losing his bearings” to McCain’s age. It’s kind of Alzheimerish. They should get a thank you note from the Obama campaign.
Any time the McCain campaign mentions his age they should be thanked by a grateful public. McCain’s frisky “young” wife is six years older than the whippersnapper.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Ah, yes. Thanks, John.
Hard to keep all of McCain’s Marks straight.
.
Halteclere
To paraphrase a well-worn-out cliche, Senator McCain, you’re no Ronald Reagan.
Reagan successfully disarmed the age issue by acknowledging that the issue existed, then humorously deflecting and therefore neutering its potency.
McCain campaign on the other hand, in complaining about Obama raising the age issue, has helped reinforce that McCain = old.
SnarkyShark
I prefer fossilized relic of a bygone era, but fucking old works too!
This is fun!
Andy
> The funny thing is that Obama isn’t going to
> have to reference age at all for it to be an
> issue. All he is going to have to do is stand
> next to McCain. . . .
And don’t forget — this will be the first general election with wall-to-wall coverage in HD.
JGabriel
Dennis – SGGM:
Let him. Every time he does it people think, “God, what a whiny old fuck.”
And I have no problem with McCain, by his own efforts and rhetoric, reminding people of the relatives they have in nursing homes.
.
phobos
McCain doesn’t loose his bearings. He simply makes course adjustments as needed.
leinie
Y’all seen John McCain’s Happy Mother’s Day Ad?
Complete with Leave it to Beaver music, and mom talking about 27 bottles of scotch at his birth.
It’s a WINNAH!
joe
I’m still going with the Indians. The Yankees dominated at first, and then collapsed. The Indians put up a hell of a fight all the way through the series, and the Sox barely squeaked it out.
Cyrus
Seven inches or more. I tried to look this up a few days ago, and oddly enough, I saw multiple figures for Obama’s height. But the lowest was 6’1.5” or 6’2”, well over McCain’s 5’7”.
Punchy
By saying “losing his bearings”, it’s clear that Osama was CLEARLY slamming Alzheimer’s patients, women (cuz we all know they suck at directions), poorly-trained Boy Scouts, people without GPS in their cars, and old roller-skate wheels (ball bearings, natch).
It’s obvious Ba(I)rak(i) is not cut for prime-time.
The Moar You Know
McCain is twelve years younger than my grandfather – who was in the second wave at Omaha beach during D-Day. They both belong in a museum. Preferably one near me – my grandpa’s a pretty cool dude.
Does anyone have any info on his involvement (more to the point, did he cause it?) with the incident on the USS Forrestal? The story is, at best, murky.
Xenos
Is ‘Whippersnapper’ going to be new nickname for the M.U.P.? The GOP keeps wanting to cast him as an uppity 48 year old (since their dare not play the race card as blatantly as the increasingly shameless H.R.C.), but it just puts an exclamation point on how old McCain is.
Calling Obama the whippersnapper is a wonderfully indirect way to diss McCain and all the McCain surrogates who are flailing about for an acceptable way to attack the presumptious young melanin-enhanced fella who is about to drink their milkshake.
The Other Steve
I have to say it.
McCain is responding just like a Democrat.
Bootlegger
Yes, yes, yes! I’m on board.
When he’s a hard driving candidate we call him The Whip. When he’s retorting in an interview or debate he’s The Snapper. And compared to McCain, he’s The Whippersnapper.
Cyrus
And to be fair, I probably would have said “losing his bearings” was a crack about McCain’s age, although the earlier use of the phrase casts doubt on it. If my gut reaction was right, good. If any personal issues outside stated policy and philosophy are legitimate campaign fodder, age certainly is. It is an accurate proxy or shorthand or something for genuine problems. McCain apparently hasn’t noticed that the Cold is over, but the separate instances demonstrating that don’t make a good soundbite.
And McCain’s campaign called far more attention to the phrase than it would have got otherwise. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I can almost picture some Broderite pointing Obama’s phrase out, “more in sorrow than in” whatever. He would be joined by a few pundits demanding an apology from Obama while McCain “stays above the fray.” It still wouldn’t be that big a story and Obama might just have to wait for it to get pushed off the front page, but it could have been a story. Now that McCain’s campaign made a big deal about it, though, it’s just a bit of witty repartée.
Xenos
I don’t know, what, if anything, McCain is said to have done regarding the Forrestal incident. The main point is that he never should have been there to begin with, as he should never have been accepted into the Naval Academy to begin with, and should have been washed out any number of times.
I would not wish happened to him in Vietnam on anyone. That does not change, however, a very Bushian pattern of being bailed out by powerful friends and family, and a real inability to appreciate his own deficiencies.
Jake
John McCain is the Izzy Mandelbaum of this campaign season:
Jake
Oops, embed no worky. Here’s the link to the Mandelbaum video.
Who
Get ready for the coming ugliness. It’s going to be bad.
scarshapedstar
I gotta say, this is a pretty limp response to Obama. The McCain camp is obviously spent at this point. They ought to accept that voters prefer a vigorous candidate who can always stand up and campaign hard. They ought to withdraw.
yet another jeff
The coming ugliness is going to be stupid. It only works when you’re an apologist…once you get someone that’s comfortable with pointing out repeatedly that the emperor is naked, then the rest is gravy. Not that weird brown gravy that someone tried to give me for a chicken fried steak once, but the normal kind….
Suicidal Zebra
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nEwlnByCJoM
just saying.
Bootlegger
Are you saying Johnny can’t keep it up? In the Age of Viagra that is an intolerably ageist thing ot say.
joe
As I understand the Forrestal incident, McCain was sitting in a plane on the deck, waiting to take off, when another plane’s missiles lauched, hitting McCain’s plane. Big bang, McCain’s plane falls through the deck into a hanger below, and then his missiles launched. Even bigger bang, and then the weapons on other planes in that hanger started going off.
I can’t for the life of me figure out how someone survives that.
RareSanity
I ran across an article on HuffPo about this very thing. Author states that Hill and Abe McCain’s politics are Nixon era, not going to work in the 21st century.
merrinc
I think the McCain camp response was um, shrill. Are we allowed to say shrill now?
Richard Bottoms
The new Republican strategy is to fight against mom and apple pie.
Slugger
Actually, Obama ought to ask how have Hamas’ fortunes fared in the last eight years. Since the exceptionally brilliant War on Terror was launched, Hamas has gone from being a faction to controlling a territory and winning an election.
Does McCain think that the Bush strategy is working?
Jay B.
I think the wording is smartly tricky. Of course it doesn’t have to be about his age. McCain could just be an idiot/hypocrite who has lost his previously perceived moral bearings. But equally so, he seems so confused, angry and witless these days, it’s easy enough to connect in peoples’ minds that the guy is a dottering old coot.
It’s how you frame the issue and Obama’s looking solid here.
The Other Steve
When the missile hit his plane, he jumped out and ran.
This wasn’t really McCain’s fault… but bad luck does seem to follow him. I think because he’s oblivious to what may happen around him. That seems to be his attitude towards Keating, land swaps and so on.
The Grand Panjandrum
Three testicles. Oh wait, that was his other opponent.
I think what needs to be pointed out is the Mark Salter has a history of public flashes of anger. I don’t have links to any of this right now but it might be worth a little research to highlight some of those incidents. The GE campaign is going to be interesting because it isn’t just McCain who has the temper. Look for many less than nuanced responses from the McCain campaign between now and November. They have a serious problem with substance and tone.
grandpajohn
Hmmm so how soon can we expect someone in the MSM to make that same point? Should I not hold my breath waiting for it to happen?
Me
Obama’s response should be:
“Of course I wasn’t insulting his age. I respect his years of service to the colonies very much. Why, I remember hearing him speak when I was in 5th grade.”
Anyone remember on the West Wing, when the Bartletites were scared of the Jock/Heisman dude running in the primary against them? Think we’ll see endless B-roll of Obama running and shit. I doubt they’ll let him play basketball (down here in alabama, we know who likes basketball), but maybe he could throw a football or something.
rawshark
I saw a snippet of a McCain speech the other day. He looked stiff. He looked slow and tired and looked like he wished he was 15 years younger.
Why is it unfair for a democratic candidate to point out his opponents shortcomings?
Original Lee
To be fair, if you have someone with Alzheimer’s in the family, “losing his bearings” will sound ageist and somewhat insensitive, especially given Obama’s relative youth. Obama probably did not intend it as an ageist comment, but it would have been better if he had said “lost his moral bearings” instead.
gypsy howell
Ooops! Obama did it again!
ThymeZone
Obama should take every opportunity to highlight the age issue … which is really a competance and readiness issue.
McCain is not competant and he is not ready to be president. He’s at the peak of his remaining powers right now, and he cannot figure out Sunnis and Shia, or make an impromptu speech without repeating himself three times.
And he is going nowhere but downhill. Imagine him in the middle of a crisis in the White House five years from now.
McCain is a disaster of a candidate, and I hope that we keep that idea in the front of our approach to the coming campaign.
OriGuy
I’m sure that the McCain campaign is thinking that older voters will be offended by references to his age, but I wonder how many people his age will wake up on Election Day and decide they don’t want a president who feels like they do in the morning.
I know I don’t, and I’m 20 years younger than he is.
Pasota
You know who’s the most ageisty demo there is? Old people.
But since antiquity is off the table … Cancer!
grandpajohn
Well at 70 let me tell you that don’t even want to have to deal with taking care of my own meagre affairs, so no, this old fart is in no way offended by concern by others that the affairs of our country would be in the hands of another near senile old fart.
ed
The spokesman then added, “But now that Mr. Salter mentions it, Jesus fuck is McCain old. I mean, holy shit, have you seen that old coot prattle on and on and on about absolutely nothing? I bet that fucker doesn’t know what he had for lunch. Today.”
Brachiator
Obama put the smackdown on McCain using a navigational pun that could be applied to ships or planes.
The smackdown was elegant. It was elitist (in that it obviously required more book learnin’ than most reporters apparently have). It took McCain down on his own turf, tweaking his military experience.
An age-related insult? Only very, very tangentially, if somebody was itching for a fight.
ThymeZone
Look, Obama is a rock star. People want their picture taken with him. He is wicked intelligent and well spoken and thoughtful in his approach to problems.
And he has a million-dollar smile, and when he stands next to John McCain at the first debate, he is going to look like the next president and John McCain is going to look kind of pathetic.
It’s going to be a good year.
mark
Maybe Salter was thinking about Captain Queeg’s ball bearings. You know, from the McCain Mutiny.
AkaDad
Isn’t “losing your bearings” a term that our Navy uses?
flyerhawk
John,
Not sure if you know this but apparently you are a sexist. Armando has just confirmed it.
John Cole
I didn’t write that thread, but I did comment in it and predict the outcome.
And Armando can DIAF. He is just troll-baiting.
Pasota
Clearly, Salter’s attack misfired onto McCain himself before they’ve even launched the general-election campaign. If he’s already spiraling out of … ah, screw it.
ThymeZone
Maybe that missile that struck McCain’s plane injured his ass and caused a brain injury?
Just trying to be helpful.
Fnonald Fnagan
Re Obama being the “candidate of Hamas”: It kills me that so much of our ruling elite can be so easily manipulated by any Islamic party. It’s like watching Elmer Fudd go up against Bugs Bunny in a keffiyeh. Hamas wouldn’t be in power if not for the limp dicks in the White House, and they can read the paper. They know a McCain administration will mean at least 4 more years of support for inept corrupt dictators and figureheads, ample fungible small arms, oceans of oil money, and so forth. What’s the best thing they can do to keep it all going? “Dear foreign journalist, we really like that Obama. We like him because he is a secret Muslim who will destroy the great Satan. All praise the invisible space beard.”
Result: 6 months of hot poop from the GOP and media hairballs. And not one of them stops FOR A SECOND to wonder WHY Hamas might say that. And the Bush administration knocks another couple points off of an Iranian reformer by praising them, instead of doing the smart thing and playing opposite day for a few minutes.
In 2004, the CIA concluded that bin Laden released his tape to boost Bush in the election. It’s a matter of record. But who reads books? The nice old war hero with all the free bbq says the terriss like Obama. Don’t embarrass him by asking any questions.
Zuzu
Oh well. So much for my earlier comment (in another thread) about the possibility McCain will keep his pledge to avoid smears.
It’s gonna be a long six months.
Tax Analyst
Hey, maybe McCain will pick Fred Thompson as his running mate. Thompson’s the only Republican around who might be perceived as older and more out-of-touch than McCain, so he might gain by the comparison.
They could counter the campaign shots of Obama running and stuff with John & Fred playing shuffleboard.
McCain: “Fred, whose turn is it now?”
Thompson: “What?”
McCain: “I SAID, WHOSE TURN IS IT NOW?”
Thompson: “Yes, it is getting durn late now. I’m tired…I’m going to take a nap now.”
AkaDad
John McCain: Older Than Plutonium
Zuzu
I think it happened a little differently, but yes, it sounds like a miracle anyone survived.
Tax Analyst
…but not nearly as bright.
Egypt Steve
Yeah. It’s not like he said “losing his marbles.” Although that is probably true.
Tax Analyst
Soylent Green
This much is certain; the missile knocked McCain’s fuel tank off his wing, engulfed the plane in fire, and McCain scrambled down the nose and jumped off, barely escaping with his life. The official record is that a short-circuit caused the missile to fire.
But there’s an alternate, unverifiable version of events. In this one, McCain was “hot starting” his plane to razz the rival pilot behind him — a trick that hotshot pilots have been known to use of letting fuel trickle into their engines so that a fireball would shoot out of the exhaust when they took off. As this story goes the fireball cooked and launched the missile, and McCain himself started the deadly fire that took the lives of 134 sailors. But his dad made sure this never got out. This version is told by a number of Vietnam vets who have a passionate hatred of John McCain and swear that it is accurate. Google “Songbird McCain” to get the various tellings. They call him Songbird in reference to what they say his Vietnamese captors called him. In that story, he told them what they wanted to know to avoid being tortured, and as a result was given preferential treatment and never tortured.
I found both of these yarns appealing, then found that the guys telling him are essentially the same bunch as the swiftboaters who hated Kerry for the same reasons, that he was a privileged elitist from an affluent background with powerful sponsors and not a working class grunt like themselves. With that in mind, the veracity of their claims goes into a special category of weirdly unverifiable claims. Also, one of the leading proponents of the alternate Forrestal story also is quite open about his belief that Zionists control everything in the world.
It’s possible that the truth of what happened on the Forrestal, if not the official version, is locked up tight in the Navy’s files somewhere. I’m sure we’ll never know.
MNPundit
I don’t know, to mean “losing bearings” = Senile.
Kudos to the Obama camp for making it ambiguous enough for plausible deniability. Regardless…. to the Magical Unity Pony!!
Brachiator
Yeah, but Thompson’s smokin’ hot wife is sexier than McCain’s trophy wife. Or is John McCain Cindy’s trophy husband?
Fixed.
Patrick
What’s hilarious about this is that Salter obviously thinks that “bearings” can only be little round things like marbles. Made of steel, but still a lot like marbles, so that if you lose them, you’re going crazy.
Not the orienteering type, I guess.
KXB
Before the Bush’s WOT, we had 4,000 servicemen who are now dead, Hamas was not in charge of the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah did not whup Israel’s ass in a month long war, and Iran was not the big dog in the Persian Gulf. Oh, and gas was less than $2 per gallon.
OriGuy
Joe Lieberman says that McCain’s bearings are just fine.
‘I just want to report that this morning I personally checked John McCain’s bearings. He has not lost any of them. They are all in really great shape.”
TenguPhule
And he personally lubed them up himself with tender loving care while humming Blue Moon River.