I predict right now that this piece will create a major-league hissy fit:
A string of erroneous word choices is helping opponents make his 71 years a matter of age, not experience.
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) said “Iraq” when he apparently meant “Afghanistan” on Monday, adding to a string of mixed-up word choices that is giving ammunition to the opposition.
Just in the past three weeks, McCain has also mistaken “Somalia” for “Sudan,” and even football’s Green Bay Packers for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Ironically, the errors have been concentrated in what should be his area of expertise – foreign affairs.
McCain will turn 72 the day after Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) accepts his party’s nomination for president, calling new attention to the sensitive issue of McCain’s advanced age, three days before the start of his own convention.
The McCain campaign says Obama has had plenty of flubs of his own, including a reference to “57 states” and a string of misstated place names during the primaries that Republicans gleefully sent around as YouTubes.
***But McCain’s mistakes raise a serious, if uncomfortable question: Are the gaffes the result of his age? And what could that mean in the Oval Office?
Personally, I remain uncomfortable making age an issue, and really see no reason for Democrats to raise the issue. McCain is wrong on so many issues, why bother raising age with the potential backlash? And really, there is no need to- the issue, as we have seen, will raise itself. Every time Obama stands next to McCain on the stage, voters and the American public will see it as it is. McCain will look old next to Obama.
Again, that may not be fair, but it is what it is. And, I will state with full admiration, I don’t know where McCain gets his energy to campaign the way he has for the past two years. That in and of itself is quite impressive, although I don’t know where any of the candidates get their drive- Hillary Clinton was an iron woman during the primary, and never seemed fatigued. Were I in McCain’s shoes, there is no chance I could pull off what he has done so far. But then again, this just goes to show that the folks running for office are systematically different from the rest of us- I can think of a number of opportunities for me to tell reporters or political opponents to go Cheney themselves- acts that would have been election enders, were I in Obama’s or McCain’s shoes.
One good thing about this story- it certainly does appear that the glow is off the McCain campaign as far as the subservient media is concerned.
harlana pepper
Your margins are screwy again.
cleek
well, at least in this one instance. time will tell if the rest of the media will let go of their oldmancrush or not.
VidaLoca
McCain would look old next to God.
Nah. Really, why should we come to that conclusion? What has changed? What is not immediately obvious today that was not obvious two weeks ago? Nothing. They will not be letting the air out of the McCain balloon any time soon.
harlana pepper
Oh, fixed. Thank you.
Xenos
The density of bad news for McCain may be the most important development. They can manage a couple well-orchestrated hissy fits per week, but will the hissy-fit response keep up with one or more crises per day. We are still halfway through he response to Obama in Iraq, and the response narrative is still fractured and unclear.
Once the Obama campaign and reality start hitting McCain with new problems on a daily basis he may just freeze up. With many of the sharpest operators and
adviserslobbyists being forced off his staff, McCain may be too handicapped to get off the defensive.harlana pepper
Age becomes an issue when so many mental gaffes keep cropping up. I’m not much for picking on old men in general either, but people really are going to wonder if he’s losing it when this kind of stuff happens over and over.
SomeCallMeTim
A President McCain will be 76 before his first term ends. If you wouldn’t feel comfortable trusting him with your car–and I wouldn’t–why would you feel comfortable trusting him with your country? The age thing should raise itself.
Mwangangi
I’m on the bandwagon saying this media event is an outlier. I don’t know that they are able to maintain the laser-like focus required to notice the obvious shambles that is McSame’s 2008 presidential campaign.
nepat
This age thing is a smokescreen, intended to change the subject from the real issue: McCain is positively gaffetastic and far from the foreign policy expert he’s been packaged as. His gaffes aren’t age-related, they’re dumb-related.
linda
One good thing about this story- it certainly does appear that the glow is off the McCain campaign as far as the subservient media is concerned.
hope you’re right … but, i’m still seeing more than a few deadenders spinning furiously to keep st john’s campaign going.
‘the surge worked!’
Punchy
I’m not. At all. We watch people this old drive 10 MPH under the limit. We watch them struggle to take big jars of sauce off the higher grocery shelves. We cringe and freak every time they fall down (it’s almost a guarenteed broken bone). They go to bed at 9, get up at 9, clap their hands to control lights, own the market for adult diapers, constantly and repeatedly call me by my brother’s name, pine for the days of watching Honus Wagner and Cy Young, walk slow, move slow, talk slow, drink those damn half-cans, refuse to drink micro-brews, are confused by a CD-ROM drive (“this is my drink holder, right?”), can barely use a cell, confused by text messages, baffled by camera phones, aghast at Miley Cyrus, gays, Blacks in power, and Al Gore.
I don’t want this person in charge of the Big Red Button.
The Thinking Man's Mel Torme
Probably cops bennies and beer from the wife.
August J. Pollak
McCain’s age is and will remain an issue mainly because he has to pick a vice-president. There is very high likelihood that a 76-year-old man with known physical disabilities and a history with cancer will not run for a second term (assuming he lives that long), and that becomes a serious issue if the suggested replacement is one of the lightweights he’s considering like Palin or Jindal.
If McCain’s people are going to keep pretending Obama “has no experience,” then I don’t see why it’s not fair game to question if you want McCain to keel over and leave control of the country to a first-term governor of one of the least-populated states in America who’s sole previous elected experience was mayor of a town of less than 6,000 people in Alaska.
Or, rather, you want Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani to be president without ever having to actually vote for him? Then yeah, let’s leave McCain’s age and health off the table.
cleek
as soon as we hear the “but he’ll surround himself with brilliant people”, we’ll know it’s over.
Andrew
Some clever person should just dress up as TheGoogle(tm) and follow McCain around.
Gindy
I’m with nepat. This gaffe business is due to his stupidity which has been of evidence since he started grammar school. Almost last in his flight class? Crashing at least 3 planes due to his inability to fly (five total but at least two were not his fault)? Acting like a 20 year old and dumping his faithful injured wife? Keating Five scandal and the ties to his second wife? All of the above are indications he is a spoiled, rich puke who, like Bush, never had to do anything but fog the mirror to get what he wanted.
Stupid is as stupid does and McCain shows it every day.
John S.
Well, more like we hear that and then see the gang of scumfucking lobbyists and loyal Bushies that McCain has surrounded himself with.
If he is judged by the company he keeps, he may want to push the age = experience meme a bit more earnestly.
Butch
I tried to cut some of the text and paste it here but goofed. Time actually has a pretty decent article (it’s quoted at Kos) on the troubles McCain is facing and the media’s apparent need to create the illusion of a close race when there isn’t one. It’s worth reading.
AkaDad
He doesn’t work on weekends.
JoyceH
Exactly. I think McCain has been givien a pass his entire career because of his POW War Hero sheen, and was never very bright or very knowledgeable to begin with. He wasn’t 71 when he finished fifth from the bottom of his Academy class. Before blaming these gaffes on age, you have to ask if they’re something new, or if they’ve always been there and just not noticed because he wasn’t under the glaring spotlight of a presidential campaign.
It’s like people wondering if his POW years gave him PTSD and that temper problem. That temper problem has always been there – his high school nickname was McNasty.
We don’t have to talk about his age, and we don’t have to blame his POW experiences for his temper.
He’s always been stupid. He’s always been mean.
Napoleon
Our local paper (Cleveland Plain Dealer) had a story on something like A6 yesterday that was headlined something like “Many seniors surf the internet: McCain not typical in his failure to use computers” or something similar to that.
Obama doesn’t need to bring age up, he will manage to do it on his own. For what its worth I personally think his gaffes are stupidity related.
JoyceH
This race is SO reminding me of the last season of West Wing, when young Congressman Santos (Jimmy Smits) ran for president against old Senator Vennick (Alan Alda). I loved the order to staff from Josh, Santos’ campaign manager. He told his team to never ever mention Vennick’s age. “Compliment his energy,” he said. “Call him ‘spry’.” Heh.
Elvis Elvisberg
Yep, I agree with nepat and JC on this one. Never, ever mention age.
McCain’s lack of knowledge comes through in his sparse, stupid policy proposals and his inability to keep anything straight when he talks.
I would have no hesitation whatsoever voting for a 72-year-old in principle (in a two-person race, that just isn’t an important factor). Just not this one.
calipygian
I have ZERO problem making age an issue. The presidency is a tough job, suitable for a youngish man, not a man who has been eligible for Social Security for 10 years.
There is a reason why 70 is the age at which you are eligible for full SS benefits – because you are fucking old!
Slow down. Take a well deserved break. Its all down hill from there and you should enjoy what good health you got at that point.
Neo
This sure makes that Obama’s legislation, for a fixed date withdrawal from Iraq by March 31, 2008, look pretty darn stupid .. but it’s so yesterday.
The Other Steve
I never understood that one. Obama said something about the primaries and caucuses they had had. He was including the territories and americans abroad and so on in this.
Somehow the Republicans thought he meant that as the number of states. But when I heard the quote, the only way to hear it as that was to have frozen peas stuffed into your ears.
Certainly Obama made reference to towns or something he visited which were not right. Traveling around the country like that it’s easy to lose track. I’d expect this of McCain as well.
Zifnab
And Obama will look black.
OMG! OMG! OMG! Bigotry is so terribly terribly unfair! Whaaaaaaaaa! Whaaaaaaaaa!
/WATB
cleek
only if you think leaving = losing
The Other Steve
Watching Obama this week, he looks Presidential.
You don’t get that feeling watching McCain.
TheFountainHead
I’m with Punchy on this one. His age does matter, and not even because it will slow him down and make him more prone to memory lapse and mis-speaking. His age matters because he grew up and had his core experiences in an era that the vast majority of Americans today were not even a zygote for! I don’t want a president for whom the internet is a curiosity and the way in which the modern world communicates and learns is Greek to him. His age matters.
neil
Republicans wouldn’t think twice about making age an issue if the ages of the candidates were reversed. They wouldn’t even blink.
Besides, McCain has Republican Operative Andrea Mitchell (or Mrs Greenspan, if you prefer) on board Obama’s plane, following him around, and doing little hit pieces on “Hardball” whining about how the press gaggle can’t get access to the candidate – so personally, I’m inclined to say “screw ‘fair'”
But essentially, I agree – I doubt the Obama campaign will make a bona-fide issue of age – but with every “senior moment” he has, McCain will make the case himself – though I also agree with ‘Napoleon’ – it could just be “teh stoopid” – an equally valid conclusion.
neil
Republicans wouldn’t think twice about making age an issue if the ages of the candidates were reversed. They wouldn’t even blink.
Besides, McCain has Republican Operative Andrea Mitchell (or Mrs Greenspan, if you prefer) on board Obama’s plane, following him around, and doing little hit pieces on “Hardball” whining about how the press gaggle can’t get access to the candidate – so personally, I’m inclined to say “screw ‘fair'”
But essentially, I agree – I doubt the Obama campaign will make a bona-fide issue of age – but with every “senior moment” he has, McCain will make the case himself – though I also agree with ‘Napoleon’ – it could just be “teh stoopid” – an equally valid conclusion.
Grumpy Code Monkey
AFAIC his age is an issue. I’ve said this before, but I’m old enough to remember the circus that was Reagan’s second term. Getting shot certainly accelerated the onset of the problems, but those issues were going to come up regardless.
McCain is already older than Reagan was in 1980, and I think Reagan was in better shape for his age than McCain is now. We’ve seen what the office does to relatively young and healthy people. Shit, Bush has taken more vacation days than Reagan did, and even he looks like hell (more so than spending 8 years in any other office).
Yeah, there are plenty of other, better reasons not to vote for McCain, but this isn’t a non-issue.
neil
Sorry about the double-vision…..not sure what happened there…..
Taylor
I agree that it would be a big mistake for Democrats to start openly harping on G.I. John for his age. His lack of understanding regarding things like THE INTERNET pretty much makes the point for them, and you have to keep in mind that this country has a HUGE ELDERLY VOTING POPULATION. Most of the oldsters will probably vote for him, in fact, because he is so much older and “more experienced” than his young rival.
Still, though, I think it’s increasingly clear that his age has certainly been a factor in all of these public speaking gaffes, and would no doubt also be a factor if he was elected president. Good thing Obama is going to finally put him out to pasture this November!
Punchy
The frozen peas in ears line is not one with which I’m familar. Now…vegatable in other orifaces…uh…nevermind.
Media Browski
John, have some spleen for gawd’s sakes! This is the REPUBLICANS we’re talking about; they certainly wouldn’t worry about backlash!
Nikita
AFAIK, democrats on TV and Obama surrogates don’t bring up McCain’s age. They tried it about a month ago when they all started calling him confused and it backlashed. Since then, nothing. Sure, for the late night show hosts, it’s become a running gag.
What I’d like them to bring up more of is the free pass he gets from the press like the “Teflon John” bit on Dan Abram’s show. Obama’s team doesn’t have a great relationship with the press and the press cannot wait to burn him on any small gaffe. Did y’all see how mad Andrea Mitchel was last night?
Elvis Elvisberg
Well, sure, and al Qaeda cuts people’s heads off.
But we’re supposed to be better than that.
JoyceH
Boy-howdy, ain’t that the truth! It’s not just McCain that’s the problem, it’s his campaign! What are they THINKING?
There’s Obama traveling, meeting with young, telegenic, enthusiastic soldiers, shooting some hoops, and there’s McCain, wheeling around in a golf cart meeting with an 80+ year old mega-millionaire named Bush. Who thought THAT would be a good compare-and-contrast? The golf cart is bad enough (a visual that brings back bad memories of the disconnected idiocy of the past seven years), but they also dress him in that checked shirt and Navy ball cap, looking for all the world like an old geezer on his way to the Early Bird Special.
liberal
Elvis Elvisberg wrote,
I agree. On the margin, I’d rather not have a 70+ y.o. candidate, but if the positions were reversed—a young Republican thug with the policy preferences of McCain, or an oldster with Obama’s anemic Democratic centrism—I’d pick the latter any day.
That doesn’t itself mean it shouldn’t be used as a political tactic to defeat McCain. (Though I agree that that tactic would backfire and for that reason shouldn’t be used.)
The Moar You Know
I don’t. McCain’s age has affected his judgement and his temper. It doesn’t affect all people that way but it certainly has affected him.
Additionally, his refusal to become familiar with modern technology and issues surrounding it is both baffling and disturbing.
Yesterday, the AP ran a glorious concern troll story about how Obama and the press ran the risk of serious backlash from the “kid gloves” treatment Obama has gotten over the last few months. The press will quit fellating McCain about three days after the election – not one second before.
D. Mason
While age and race aren’t the same, they will be treated the same in this context. The Republicans want Obama to pull the trigger first here so they can unleash a volley of “Nigger, Nigger, Nigger” without repercussion.
Jiggy
I think this answers where McCain gets the energy to do all of his campaigning:
http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3801&Itemid=1
The Grand Panjandrum
Clearly McCain is right about one thing. No difference AT ALL between the Steelers and Packers! Neither one is Super Bowl champ this year. That is all you really need to know about every other team accept the champs. (OK I saw my chance to gloat over the Giants again and rib Cole at the same time.)
I’m with you on the overt age reference thing. Most people will see Obama and McCain side by side at some point and it will be clear that McCain is a midget. McCain’s little gaffes may or may not be age related. He’s never struck me a being all that interested in any area of policy that does not (or has not) personally touched his life. I think this fundamental lack of knowledge shows his incurious nature and is evidence that he is out of touch. In many respects his over reliance on advisers is alarmingly similar to the current occupant of the White House. All Presidents require a large cadre of advisers but relying on them to provide a basic knowledge on important areas of policy is not reassuring.
Obama appears to be a quick study and has impressed me. McCain actually scares the shit out of me because he is lazy and has had years to get up to speed on the economy and Social Security but still seems to lack basic knowledge about how they works. (Recall McCain’s personal economic and retirement plan is based on marrying an heiress after wooing her while still married to the woman who stood by you while you were incarcerated as a POW. Classy.)
So, yeah, age isn’t to high on my list of concerns. But it is in the back of almost everyone’s mind. He is old. But how much of an effect does it have on his ability to handle one of the most stressful jobs ever devised by humans? I can’t say.
BTW. If you think McCain looks old now wait until mid-October. He. Will. Look. Worse. And older.
liberal
Elvis Elvisberg wrote,
Screw that.
When some guy has been punching you repeatedly in the gut, at some point you have to punch back.
We can put it in terms of evoluationary psychology, too: there’s some evidence that human morality has its biological basis in reciprocal altruism. When the other party repeatedly “defects” in an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, the appropriate strategy is not to continue to “cooperate,” but also defect.
Of course, for purely tactical reasons–as in, we’re better off not making a big deal about McCain’s age, because it will backfire—we might not choose to defect. But to continue to “cooperate” (viz, take the high road) with these thugs just because “it’s the right thing to do” is mistaken, IMHO.
Let’s not forget Krugman’s point: these people comprise a “revolutionary power”. They’re a bunch of Brownshirts. They need to be dealt with appropriately.
liberal
Grumpy Code Monkey wrote,
Alexander Cockburn had a column at the time, where he presciently labeled some pathetic Iran-Contra era performance by Reagan as “scoring pretty high on the Alzheimer’s graph.”
cleek
NPR ran a story the other day talking about the relative amounts of coverage McCain got v what Obama got in May and June, and if that was a demonstration of bias. Obama has like 40+ stories and McCain only 17 (!OMG! i sees it! bias!).
three or four minutes into it, they were clever enough to remind us that the Dem primary was going on during that time, which easily explains the ratio. but then they didn’t bother counting up which stories were favorable to either candidate, or which were discussions of the plethora of mini-pseudo-scandals.
so, my big take-away from the NPR piece was: um, so what? you told us that Obama got more coverage, but you treated the obvious reason for it almost as a side note; and you didn’t bother telling us, even in aggregate, what the stories were about. bah.
bah!
Shinobi
As much as I don’t like McCain, you do gotta give the man props for his energy levels. When I am 72 I plan to be spending all my time in what is left of Florida brushing my cats.
Scotty
Um, wasn’t that line a joke?
LIL Q
I agree, Democrats shouldn’t make a big issue of the age thing. But in this case, it was the media, not Dems making it an issue. But there is a reason for the American people to make it an issue. Two words: Ronald Reagan.
And as far as McCain having the energy to campaign. It is impressive but it also helps as it’s been reported that McCain takes the weekends off. Sen. Obama doesn’t, but on weekends McCain rests up for the next five days. When you are President of the US, you don’t get weekends off. So McCain’s fairly easy schedule will suddenly change if he’s elected and then a 72 year old man will have to earn his keep. I don’t think he can cut it and my bet is the American people won’t think he can either.
calipygian
K-Lo:
Pathetically stupid in light of her Bush man-crush, or dangerously insane? You be the judge.
Someone is going to have to call the men with the butterfly nets and white coats when Obama gets elected.
Keith
He’s been harvesting the energy created when he gets little kids to pull his finger.
LIL Q
Scotty, I don’t know if that 57 states line was a joke or not, but you know it was said by accident. Obama knows there are only 50 states. The problem is that I am not so sure that McCain knows the difference between Sunni and Shia or the actual geography of the middle east or that he’s not back in the early 90’s when Chechoslavakia actually existed. One is a slip of the tongue, the other gaffes by McCain are a little scarier.
Halteclere
Every time McCain says a gaffe or spreads a lie while attacking Obama, Obama should reply “If Senator McCain would only have Googled it, he would not have been so uninformed of my position”.
slag
The only people who are talking about age with regard to McCain’s f-ups work for the Politico and late night comedy teevee.
C’mon, John, this article was just a bogus way for the Politico to assert that Democrats are being mean by picking on McCain. Really, its only objective seems to be to give McCain an out for being a moron. And if people have a hissy fit over the article, well, that’s just ‘mission accomplished’ as far as Politico is concerned.
Original Lee
The MSM will find some way to make sure we don’t know about very many of those gaffes. Besides, gaffes make McCain look more like one of the people, unlike that stuck-up Obama guy who is the favorite of the media elite. BTW, Dick Morris was busily trying to paint Obama as an elite European-style socialist last night – that’s why the Europeans love him, you know, not because he’s sane and coherent and is willing to talk to them as if they are peers with their own valid opinions. Even my very very conservative neighbor was laughing about that this morning – “Yeah, Obama paid off his student loans a couple of years ago and McCain is married to a billionaire, so that makes Obama completely more elitist than McCain!”
The Grand Panjandrum
Who knew looking like you eat supper at 4:30 (in the afternoon!) could have a negative impact on your chances of being elected to the White House. Jesus I half expect to wake up one morning to find out they found him wandering, disoriented and lost, around a dog track somewhere out here in the West with a note pinned to his sweater saying they just couldn’t handle taking care of him anymore.
LIL Q
What K-Lo isn’t used to after 8 years of Bush is a thoughtful man actually searching his vocabulary for the correct word rather than spewing whatever talking point he was told earlier or using the same words over and over again because he’s too intellectually lazy to come up with a new one. “Appreciate” anyone? How about Bush’s great go-to line when he doesn’t know what else to say, “My job as President. . . .” This man has more jobs as a president than any president in history. The one true job, defending and protecting the constitution, he forgot about. Maybe all his other jobs as president got in the way.
Dork
Actually, a steak sauce.
PeterJ
It helps if you spend the weekends napping instead of campaigning…
The Moar You Know
So am I, barely. Motherfucker didn’t know where he was half the time. If I’d understood more about how Alzheimer’s works (spending a year taking care of an Alzheimer’s relative has a wonderful way of educating you about it) I’d have been scared shitless. I assume someone responsible had control of the football, etc, because there’s no way he was in charge of anything given the cognitive decline he’d experienced.
Bob In Pacifica
I’m approaching 58 and I have that word mix-up thingie going on, but I’ve had trouble with names all my life. I was an officer in my union twice, and each time the hardest part was remembering the names of the 2500 members of our branch. It was an incredible and exhausting mental task. Each time after I left office I would experience great relief and within three months I would forget most of the names of people I didn’t see daily. It was like cleaning the hard drive, and each time the old noggin was grateful to be able to think about other things.
These days I find the google function on my computer a good way to replace my “whatshisnames” and “whatchamacallits” with actual names. But it took months to remember the name of my ex-brother-in-law. As it is, I see my Girlfriend’s sisters at Thanksgiving and Christmas and tend to forget their names in the interim. I don’t know if these are signs of impending Alzheimers because I still have occasional moments of clarity. Still, while I think my heart’s in the right place I probably wouldn’t vote for me for President either.
So now that I’ve given my mea culpas I suspect that Napoleon (the one posting above) has hit on the core question: Is McCain’s problem that he forgets names or that he’s stupid? Really, maybe he’s just stupid.
Progressive Libertarian
The issue isn’t McCain’s age. It’s the fact that he continually gets very basic information wrong. Personally, I think it’s because McCain lacks any sort of intellectual curiosity or drive to study this kind of thing. You don’t finish fifth from the bottom of your class in the Naval Academy without a somewhat below-average work ethic, after all.
LIL Q
Bob, I have had trouble in the past remembering stuff too. But I think my problem was sleep disturbances. You can really mess with your mind if you aren’t sleeping properly. Sleep apnea and other conditions make you in a constant state of forgetfullness. You said this problem has been going on most of your life so I wouldn’t worry about Alzheimers. Maybe you are just one of those people that aren’t “good with names.” There are plenty of people out there like that.
Brachiator
I think that the media will find new and exciting ways to be subservient to McCain.
And none of these foreign policy gaffes will find traction with the voters because most people don’t know the difference between Sunni and Shi’a, or where Afghanistan is, or whether or not Czechoslovakia still exists as a unified country.
Obama’s recent rather mild suggestion that Americans learn a separate language has been met with the standard jingoistic backlash that a real American doesn’t have to know a goddamn thing about the rest of the world, and the only thing the rest of the world needs to know is which part of our mighty ass they should be kissing in gratitude for the US being, well, the most wonderfullest country ever.
McCain keeps warbling about how Obama doesn’t have any military experience at all. I’m waiting for a reporter to ask the obvious question: “Are you saying that the Constitution should be suspended and the United States ruled by the military?”
Jake
I just posted the following over on Yglesias’s page:
The Steelers gaffe is the one that’s really hard to overlook, IMO. We’re talking about a story that McCain has told repeatedly, is about his time as a POW, and wrote about in his biography.
How does he misremember that? You want to say he didn’t misremember, he just pandered? So he modified his POW history to pander to a local audience?
How that incident hasn’t gotten more attention is just incredible.
I think most of us would also agree that had Obama made a similar screw-up, his campaign would be seriously imperiled.
ThymeZone
Don’t agree with the premise here. Age is an issue. Ronald Reagan might have spent a good deal of his presidency not knowing exactly what was going on around him. He ended up with Alzheimer’s. Does anyone really think he didn’t suffer a cognitive decline during his presidency?
McCain’s gaffes are not the funny kind. He’s a guy who wants to be seen as all-wise and knowing, but makes ugly congnitive errors on matters of the greatest importance. Voters would be foolish not to pay attention to them.
Further, it’s McCain who has taken the lead on making a point of his age and experience. That makes it a legitimate issue. I don’t see Dems pointing at his birthdate as much as I see McCain himself trying to act like an all-knowing grandfather. It’s his chosen act, and if he doesn’t pull it off, it’s his problem.
jvill
It’s truly amazing how the right is so good at scaring people into not being able to discuss the age issue.
Why not?
The man won’t give a full public release of his health records.
He’s completely out of touch with computers, the Internet, and other major drivers of our modern economy (the economy being a subject he was unfamiliar with even BEFORE it was complicated by those fancy boxes with tubes inside).
And, as we all now know, Saint Ronnie wasn’t all there the last few years.
So we have:
A) a candidate who’s actively hiding issues about his health
B) a candidate who shows significant signs of being mentally out-of-touch/ignorant/fuzzy on our most perilous current issues
C) a Republican party that actively protected a mentally deteriorating predecessor, and is obviously seeking to do so again.
As the Republicants like to say, “if he’s got nothing to hide, why is he hiding?”
Or, as The Simpsons like to say, “OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD!”
Jake
Check out CNN’s current front-page story.
Jesus fucking Christ. Can we please, please, please, stop the stupid?
Napoleon
Good God!
Yes Obama becoming President would be just another bad thing that has happened to black people in this country like the end of the African slave trade, emancipation, Jackie Robinson, Voting Rights Act, Colin Powell, etc.
AkaDad
Why do Jews hate Joe Lieberman?
Zifnab
But you know who it could be good for?
Hillary!
phobos
Let’s not forget that the elderly are at much greater risk of being attacked by robots.
Teak111
Obama won’t mention age if McCain doesn’t talk about black.
ThymeZone
Yes, it’s the first item on CNN’s front page right now.
Everyone should read, and then discuss, preferably in a thread for that purpose.
Original Lee
On second thought, I think it’s gotta be something about McCain’s campaign strategy that posits these gaffes don’t matter, possibly because the MSM rarely calls him on them or fact-checks them. I think McCain is intentionally fact-free so that he can spout whatever he wants to and act sincere while he says it.
This attitude appears to permeate his staff, as well. For instance, a couple of weeks ago his chief economic adviser, Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, said in an interview that reopening NAFTA is risky because then Canada would feel free to renegotiate the energy provisions that allow the U.S. to buy oil and natural gas from Canada at significantly below-market prices.
Um, what? We’re getting cheap oil and natural gas from Canada????
No, actually we’re not. NAFTA’s energy provisions just prevent Canada from interfering in the normal functioning of the energy market through imposing export taxes or through direct disruption of supply channels. NAFTA says nothing about either Canada or Mexico having to give us below-market prices on oil and natural gas. If we were really getting that kind of a break, I would expect Congress to be going after our NAFTA partners to help save our economy, wouldn’t you? NOT.
Brachiator
I love the phony story highlights in this CNN story, especially the use of the “some say” feint to make up bullshit :
I hear that the Republican camp is complaining because CNN won’t run a story about how a McCain presidency will hurt black Americans.
Andrew
Because he’s an asshole.
SATSQ
Leisureguy
On a human level, if you’ve watched a relative succumb to Alzheimer’s disease, you can’t help but be concerned about the pattern of continuing odd mistakes. It’s not age per se, but the fact that Alzheimer’s typically strikes older people and announces itself with odd lacunae in speech and memory. I don’t see why anyone would NOT be concerned about the possibility. Presumably McCain will eventually release his medical records, including a thorough exam and investigation of the possibility, and that will help settle the issue.
Jake
From the goddamn media geniuses at CNN:
It doesn’t seem odd or inappropriate. It IS inappropriate, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES.
Dork
Thought you guys were joking about the CNN story. That’s damn near Onion-esque.
Really, the first Black president will hurt Black Americans? Unfuckingreal. I’ve seen in all.
Tomorrow’s headline: Can the Presidency really withstand 4 years of Jerri-Curl and gansta rap?
TR
Andrea Mitchell isn’t even hiding it anymore. She’s beyond pathetic.
TR
It gets worse. Dee Dee Myers has a horrible piece in the new Vanity Fair where she insists that the media is in the tank for Obama because the media spends more time talking about him.
Yes, Dee Dee, the three weeks they spent breaking out the torches over Rev. Wright really were a sign that they love Obama.
Jake
His bitter remarks got nearly 24-hour, non-stop coverage from CNN, for an entire weekend, including anchors speculating as to why nobody in PA seemed to care about them. I nearly threw the TV out my front window that weekend.
4tehlulz
IF YOU VOTE OBAMA, YOU HATE BLACK PEOPLE
OK we are officially beyond parody now.
NewUnansweredQuestions
Some say that the earth looks flat.
Some say that the earth is 6000 years old.
Some say that Teri Sciavo was one goblet of eggnog away from going caroling with her friends.
Some say that American healthcare is the best in the world.
Some say that global warming is a fraud.
Some say that intelligent design explains smallpox and bone cancer.
Some say that Barack Obama caused high oil prices.
Some say that Saddam Hussein caused 911.
Some say that we will still find the WMDs.
Some say that gay marriage will hurt straight marriages.
Some say that George Bush got his best cabinet advice from God.
Some say that the fact the somebody says something completely absurd is all you need to legitimize its repetition via the national media 24 hours a day.
BombIranForChrist
Flubbing lines is not necessarily a sign of age. Dubya flubbed half the words he ever spoke. It may be that McCain isn’t senile. He’s just an idiot.
Margarita
I doubt there would be any backlash at all. The age angle is all about weakness, lack of vitality, impotence. It’s one step removed from calling a candidate a fag, which is a proven backlash-proof tactic.
But even still, yes, refraining from overt age references is good advice. Not because of backlash, but because of the lowered-expectations game that the media loves to play. The more that age is an issue, the more that McCain “wins” every time he doesn’t audibly fart and spit out his dentures during a debate.
The Moar You Know
More likely it’s a sign that Dubya has Korsakoff’s Syndrome from years of alcohol and cocaine abuse.
Calouste
I look forward to Senator Obama wishing Senator McCain a happy 72nd birthday, which conveniently falls just between the Democratic and the Republican conventions. And then go on for a few minutes about his accomplishments for the country ever since he graduated from the Naval Academy 50 years ago, to the time he was shot down in Vietnam 41 years ago, to the time he was first elected to congress 25 years ago.
D
“…and even football’s Green Bay Packers for the Pittsburgh Steelers.”
McCain did not “mistake” the Packers for the Steelers. McCain was campaigning in PITTSBURGH. During a TV interview with KDKA TV McCain changed a personal story about his time as a POW that he’s been telling for 25 years about the Packers – making it into the Steelers for the first time ever.
It is called “lying for votes”.
Xenos
The comparison to Bush is not flattering. The man clearly has brain damage from 20 years as a drunk, to say nothing about his drug use.
Ella in NM
My Dad is a 73 year-old, newly retired government engineer. He is totally hip, knows all the latest issues, uses the computer constantly. He is constantly doing major home improvement projects all by himself, even though I beg him to ask one of our teenage football players to help him. He just signed up to take an introductory genetics class at our university because he’s “curious”. I have to call him to figure out everything from how to use all the features on my cell phone to where the best car rental deals are. Based on our family history, he will probably live to be 90, (albeit he might not be taking his daily 5-mile walk by then).
Even he says John McCain is “too f**king old to be President”–meaning his brain has atrophied from years of being unchallenged, pampered by staff, and trapped in an anachronistic view of the world.
NewUnansweredQuestions
Your dad is a very smart gentleman. Being “too old” is not all about chronological age. It can be about just being too old in his ways, and his attitudes.
In that sense, George Bush was too old to be president when he was 50. McCain definitely is too old. But, that’s a subjective view, and mine, so …. there you are.
Andrew
All we know is… he’s called the Stig.
NewUnansweredQuestions
Yes, and calling into question how much of the original story was ever true in the first place.
Which could just be the Fish Story effect, or, it could be a sign that Magoo actually thinks that his POW experience entitles him to higher office. And, frankly, he is within his rights to think that. Problem is, I don’t think that, and I think neither do a lot of other people.
Trabb's Boy
There is nothing wrong with raising the age issue as an issue. What’s wrong is raising it as a joke.
There are a number of legitimate concerns about electing a 72-year-old, the biggest being that the dementia which hits a fair number of elderly people comes on slowly. The loss of memory and confusion happen so slowly that it is never clear when to say that a person is no longer capable of performing a job. McCain’s gaffes are statistically unlikely to be dementia, but we don’t know. We wouldn’t know until, perhaps, he was confused enough for his position as President to be a danger to the country.
There are less consequential, and less well understood issues that happen to a percentage of people who are older, such as losing ability to learn new, complex information. Again, doesn’t happen to everyone, hard to say whether it is apparent in any individual for a while.
So it is reasonable to say, “There is a greater statistical likelihood that someone in this age bracket will, over the next four years, develop problems that will make them incapable of performing this extremely complex and important job and we wouldn’t know until it’s too late.” You don’t have to do any sort of remote diagnosis of McCain himself in order to reasonably express this as an issue.
As for the diaper jokes, the “get off my lawn” jokes, and the “X is older than John McCain” jokes, those are really fucking offensive.
LanceThruster
Regarding the Obama “57 states” flub, could that have been the total number of primary contests? There were states (at least one) that had both a primary election and a caucus as well as the primaries for the territories and D.C.. And in primaries that were open, did the Dems and GOP do those at the same time?
I can’t imagine that Sen. Obama just pulled that number out of thin air.
I’ve tried to figure out the final tally here Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2008 but started to get bleary-eyed.
w vincentz
I always wondered why Johnnie McOld has not been shown driving his vehicle. Could it be that staffers fear he will mistake the gas pedal for the brake and again drive it through the front of a restaurant at the strip mall?
Seems we already know how well he pilots jets.
calipygian
If you listen to the whole clip of the 57 states flub, he says that his advisors wont let him go to Alaska or Hawaii and he had only skipped one other state up to that point for a total of 57 states he had visited.
Its obvious he misspoke and meant to say 47.
LanceThruster
Many thanks.
w vincentz
Why didn’t Bush 41 let him drive the golf cart in K-port?
calipygian
Bush only crashed one plane. McCain crashed five. Bush isn’t crazy.
skyler
why doesn’t anyone notice that the article, which claims that liberal critics are “pouncing” on McCains gaffes, can’t cite a single example besides david letterman…
but whatever now the conservative blogs can outrage themselves over liberal ageism, almost as bad as liberal racism and sexism
chopper
fuck you. john mccain is old. he’s so old his driver’s license is in hieroglyphics. motherfucker DJd the boston tea party. dude remembers back when the dead sea was just a bit sick.
in short, he’s old. and it’s funny. god, it’s funny as shit. take your concern trolling somewhere else.
Hart Williams
Well, as they say, you’re only as old as you think you are. Problem is, McCain’s OLD by that standard: Doesn’t use computers or, seemingly, understand Ted Stevens’ internets and their tubes. (Good lord! Considering that the internet is taking over from the auto industry as THE engine of our economy … why would anyone vote for a politician who knew nothing about farming in a farm state? nothing about fishing in a fishing state? or, frankly, nothing about real estate in a real state?)
By that standard, there’s a lot of old growth trees with a more youthful outcome than McCain’s:
Still thinks Vietnam was a ‘good war’ and believes that it was those awful hippies what losted it.
Thinks he’s a moral bastard after his vicious dumping of his first wife, flagrant adultery and both his felonious behavior in the “Keating Five” scandal (“I didn’t know.”) and his wife’s sleazy “Get out of jail free” pass when she stole prescription medication from orphans.
And, perhaps worst of all — to the voter — his cranky old man campaign of “GET OFF MY LAWN YOU KIDS!” to that whippersnapper Obama.
(The GOP has been crying wolf so long you’d think they never heard of the story of that boy.)
Twenty Three Skiddoo, Senator McCain Unable.
(I leave it to other commenters to chronicle the ocean of gaffes that Skyler, above, has been comatosely oblivious to.)
Gary D
My Republican step mother will not vote for McCain. She says he is too old. She doesn’t like Obama but given the choices…. She is a bit older than McCain.
cervantes
Now, it is obvious that these so-called “gaffes” all have something in common — he’s having trouble with proper names. I’m quite sure that Sen. McCain knows the difference between Russia and Germany, and Iraq and Afghanistan, but his brain is slipping a cog when it goes to access the label. I can’t swear that he knows Sunni from Shiite but I’m sure he’d been briefed on it shortly before the news conference with Joe Lieberman in which he committed the error. (The Packers/Steelers thing could be a case of dishonest pandering, of course, but it’s sort of hard to believe he thought he could get away with it. A cognitive slip could at least have contributed to the initial error, although a more honest man would have corrected it.)
This is not, by the way, a symptom of early stage Alzheimer’s disease, which is characterized by failures of short-term memory integration, and looks very different. We all make such errors occasionally. Proper names are actually the most difficult kind of word for the brain to file and retrieve. Who hasn’t had the horrible experience of not being able to remember the name of someone you have known fairly well? Still, it does seem to be happening to McCain a lot, and mostly in a fairly specific semantic category, which is actually a bit more suggestive of a real problem than would be a general occasional error in word choice. That he has to labor to read aloud is also suggestive of a problem in generating spoken language.
If this is more than just a few senior moments, the most likely diagnosis would be called primary progressive aphasia, which is a form of frontotemporal dementia. This poorly understood process is usually characterized only by language difficulties in the first two years or so, and often for longer, without other kinds of impairment, although the language difficulties tend to grow more profound and start to extend to comprehension as well as language production. Eventually, the disability spreads to other cognitive functions, affecting memory, and personality. It may seem inappropriate to mention this, and perhaps it is. The evidence is certainly weak, as I say people can make such mistakes without it being a sign of anything seriously wrong. But this man is running for president of the United States.
Finally, full disclosure: I’m a social scientist with a subspecialty in sociolinguistics, not a neurologist. But I have studied the sociology of brain injury, and my father has this precise disease — now in a very advanced stage. So I have some idea what I’m talking about. McCain’s age is not a big issue for me, so long as he’s healthy. (Obviously, I don’t think he is qualified to be president on other grounds, and I intend to vote for Obama.) But he does have a responsibility to make sure that he is fit for the job. I certainly hope that he has had his physicians perform an in-depth neurological assessment, and recently.
tom.a
David Gregory aside, the guy can’t help but suckle on the McCain teat every chance he gets.
Mwangangi
Marvelous. I’d love to see McCain try to beat Helen Mirren’s time.
Notorious P.A.T.
Really, the first Black president will hurt Black Americans?
That’s the first thing that crossed my mind when he announced his candidacy. I wish, for the sake of Black Americans, that someone like David Duke or Jesse Helms would be elected president. That would help civil rights.
Chuck Butcher
It seems CBS didn’t get the memo when they let McCain put the Sunni awakening behind the surge and put it on the cutting room floor instead of reporting it.
HRA
“Obama doesn’t need to bring age up, he will manage to do it on his own.”
The truth is anyone can see McCain’s age without being told or reminded about it. The question is do they really care enough about it to not vote for him. Certainly, anyone at any age can be forgetful or as has been shown here can be sharp at any age. What I found crucial is seeing McCain a short while ago correcting the gaffe about the Czech Republic. His first try was Republic of Czech. Then he quickly turned it around to the right way. If this was the only gaffe on his part, I would not give it much credence. It was only this evening when I heard some of his gaffes that I had missed. All of them pertain to foreign policy. That’s scary.
Yes, Andrea Mitchell looks like her stomach has soured over the last few days. Now she is whining about the non access to Obama by the press. I think she’s unhappy about having to follow him around on her own and not being invited on his plane.
“Though it might seem odd or even inappropriate—a few political commentators warn African-Americans that an Obama victory could be twisted to suppress the push for racial equality.”
Who are these political commentators? Mark Halperin? Harold Ford? I know it’s not Rachel Madow.
Batocchio
Late-night comics are one thing, but I don’t see that many Dems bringing up McCain’s age. I see them bringing up his constant misstatements, whether lies or due to confusion. The Beltway crowd, yet again, is trying to conflate the two. (Plus, McCain’s been confused for too long to blame senility alone.)