I see that John McCain not only is having trouble keeping track of his wife’s condos and mini-mansions, but also isn’t sure what kind of car he (or rather, his chauffeurs) drive when they transport him to those places.
In our News interview, he was asked what kind of car he drove. As with Politico’s question about home ownership, he didn’t know and had to ask a nearby aide. "A Cadillac CTS," she told him. (hat tip to Blue Wind)
Now this is getting into dangerous territory for McCain – not so much, as the Obama campaign keeps insisting, because it makes him look rich and out of touch (McCain doesn’t have the personal mannerisms, like George Bush Sr.’s preppie goofiness, or John Kerry’s Thurston Howell III accent, that would help the impression stick) but because it makes him look like a senile old coot. Misplacing your house and car keys is one thing, but misplacing the houses and the car is usually taken as a sign that grandpa is a little too, um, confused to be on his own.
I’m not the only one who thinks so:
I suspect that voters don't (and won't) see McCain--a former POW who lived through years of excruciating torture--primarily as a man of privilege. But they already think he's old. And in case you're wondering whether Team Obama is aware of the "senility" connotation, look no further than today's insta-ad. It says "asked how many houses he has, McCain lost track. He couldn't remember." That's a bit more loaded than "McCain wasn't sure."
But McCain’s gaffes (if the decent into second childhood can properly be described as a "gaffe") don’t just remind me of stereotypical geezer behavior. They’re starting to make him look like one old codger in particular: Admiral James Stockdale, Ross Perot's vice presidential running mate way back in 1992.
Do you remember him? Also a navy pilot and Vietnam POW hero, Stockdale was selected by Perot more or less on the spur of the moment because the Reform Party needed a VP candidate to get on the ballot in a bunch of states. Stockdale was supposed to be a placeholder for a more "serious" pick to be named later. However, Perot’s people discovered, to their horror, that they couldn’t dump Stockdale without getting Perot booted off the ballot in a number of key states.
It definitely for an interesting ticket (although in Perot's case "bizarre" is probably the better word) Stockdale was quite a character: gruff and grizzled, as squat as a fireplug, but topped by an impressive thatch of thick white hair, he looked like a cross between James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson (you youngsters out there can go look them both up -- and stay off my lawn!)
The problem was that while Stockdale was really what McCain pretends to be (a straight talker) that meant he sorely lacked McCain’s BS skills. He was also hard of hearing, and a bit of a slow talker who didn’t so much speak as growl out his words. He wore fairly thick glasses, and his eyes had a tendency to wander while he talked – as if he was looking at things on either side of his audience that they couldn’t see. Fairly or unfairly, Stockdale often gave the impression that he was more than a bit out of it – Grandpa Simpson’s political stunt double.
It didn’t help when Stockdale showed up at the vice presidential debate and immediately began to sound like someone who had just wandered away from an assisted living facility.
MODERATOR: Admiral Stockdale, your opening statement, please, sir?
ADMIRAL STOCKDALE: Who am I? Why am I here?
Stockdale then proceeded to spend three or four minutes paddling back up the stream of of his own consciousness, revisiting, along the way, his experiences as a POW:
STOCKDALE: The centerpiece of my life was the Vietnam War. I was there the day it started. I led the first bombing raid against North Vietnam. I was there the day it ended, and I was there for everything in between. Ten years in Vietnam, aerial combat, and torture. I know things about the Vietnam War better than anybody in the world. I know some things about the Vietnam War better than anybody in the world.
It certainly established Stockdale's bona fides as a American hero, but "I know everything there is to know about the Vietnam War" wasn’t what the voters wanted to hear just then – in part due to economic hard times, but also because we’d just emerged from a decade-long national self-flagellation (otherwise known as the’80s) over who got us into the war, and why, and who was responsible for losing it, and why, and who supported the troops and who called them babykillers when they came home, and so on. People were kind of sick of it (which is why Bill Clinton was able to slide so easily past the record of his song-and-dance routine with the Arkansas draft board). So the only part of Stockdale’s speech anyone really paid attention to was that opening line – the one that made him sound like Ronald Reagan on acid.
It was all downhill from there: Barely able to hear the moderator or his fellow debaters, and left completely unprepared by Perot's chaotic campaign, Stockdale mostly just listened, looking, alternatively, either mildly bemused or a completely stupefied as Al Gore and Dan Quayle went at each other with hammers and tongs. At one point, asked if he would like to respond to a question about health care, Stockdale flat out admitted he was stumped:
BRUNO: Admiral Stockdale, would you like to start the discussion period?
STOCKDALE: Well, I'm out of ammunition on this one . . .
His honesty was (and still is) admirable to me. But the comics and talk show hosts had a field day – Dana Carvey and the late, great Phil Hartman did a wickedly funny Saturday Night Live sketch of Ross Perot futilely trying to dump his running mate in woods. Within a few days Stockdale’s political image (clueless old geezer) was set in stone.
Given Perot’s own spectacularly crazy behavior that year, it’s hard to say how much of a drag Stockdale was on the ticket, but the consensus seemed to be that as while he was in many ways a sympathetic, even lovable curmudgeon, he just wasn’t credible as a man who would be a heartbeat away from the presidency. (Which, let’s face it, is just rank ageism: If Dan Quayle can do the job anyone can).
Nevertheless, it’s probably not helpful for John McCain to start sounding and acting like Admiral Stockdale did in that campaign – not when his campaign’s ubiquitous POW references already resemble a forced march down memory lane.
Or I could be wrong – with the country’s population even older than it was back then, and its political and economic institutions sunk even deeper into a state of drooling, helpless senility, maybe Stockdale was actually ahead of his time, and John McCain now coming into his.