And some of you thought I was exaggerating about how bad McCain is doing in his appearances.
Three times recently the McCain camp has issued statements that McCain doesn't know what he is saying.
One - McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin responded yesterday to the report, saying that McCain’s public statements are not necessarily “official” policy.
Two - Trying to stymie the conservative blow-back over his boss’s recent comments, McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds insisted to Fox News this morning that the senator hadn’t really been speaking for the campaign.
Three - McCain’s own campaign refused to say whether it stands by the candidate’s announcement that he supports the ballot initiative [banning affirmative action programs.]
Finally, here is McCain himself denying he says what he says.
First, he denied that the Iraqis wanted the U.S. to leave on a timetable, then he said that Maliki had floated “a pretty good timetable.” Defending his shifts today, he claimed, “Anything sounds good to me.”I was thinking this was incipient senility but there is another possibility. Do you think a McCain double has escaped the reservation and is shooting his mouth off while McCain takes his naps?
Seriously, not since Reagan have a bunch of people behind the scenes been pulling the strings on such an elderly puppet candidate.
ADDED - I see Garrison Keillor is also reminded of Reagan:
It's no surprise that Senator McCain likes to bring out his 96-year-old mother Roberta, I suppose. The problem is that she is a lot perkier than he. The gentleman has had a few bad weeks, thundering in a dithery way about America's enemies, looking vaguely purposeful campaigning up and down supermarket aisles as if he couldn't remember what kind of cheese he'd been sent to buy. He surely will hit his stride after the Republican convention, but at the moment he looks to be eight years too late. The brash Bull Moose independent of 2000 has made all sorts of accommodations since, abandoning common sense when necessary, and his unsteadiness the past couple weeks makes his age an unspoken issue: Anyone who remembers the Iran-Contra years and the president who couldn't remember is not anxious to see a genial oldster dithering in the Oval Office. There is more to the job than flashing a big grin. You do need to make sense now and then.I hate to break it to the hard core conservatives, I kid, but Clinton was more popular than Reagan. Reagan's popularity frequently dipped below 50 percent during his first term, plummeted to 46 percent during the Iran-Contra scandal, and never exceeded 68 percent. (By contrast, Clinton's maximum approval rating hit 71 percent, after the GOP tried to impeach him for lying about a tawdry affair.)
Did you know? Clinton and Reagan edition.
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