John McCain: Still Battling Common Sense and Mental Health

The verbal mediocrities and stingerless "zingers" that pass for searing wit in presidential debates these days have Ronald Reagan to thank for being graded on such an easy curve.

One score and eight years ago the Gipper's four little mundane words -- "There you go again" -- were hailed by the interpretive media as a paradigm of sizzling extemporaneity, a flash of sarcastic brilliance that would have humbled Daniel Webster and was likely never to be outdone in future arenas of rhetorical combat.

Hence I was little upset, nor long surprised, when I heard, for example, MSNBC's two post-debate analysts of Andrea Mitchell and Pat Buchanan fall all over themselves with wonder and admiration at John McCain's rehearsed banality:

"Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."

That, they said -- in all seriousness, I'm left to guess -- would be the takeaway line of the night. What a rapierlike tongue has the good senator from Arizona -- an unrecoverable stab indeed, a piercing wound, an indefeasible thrust of pure, sardonic genius.

Stop the presses: Was that, they marveled, the clichéd game-changer so badly in need by Mr. McCain? Well, probably not, they conceded with a touch of melancholy. But damn, it was great, one for the history books.

Yes, our standards and expectations have sunk that low. Well, they have for Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Buchanan, anyway. I was sure that their robotic colleagues at Fox-RNC News were even more awed, yet I possessed not the gastrointestinal wherewithal to confirm it.

But I'm delighted to see this morning that, according to a CBS News poll, 78 percent of uncommitted voters were not so easily dazzled:

"Fifty-three percent … identified Democratic nominee Barack Obama as the winner of tonight's debate. Twenty-two percent said Republican rival John McCain won. Twenty-five percent saw the debate as a draw."

That 22 percent are probably still yuk-yuk-yukking it up from 1980. Oh, those supply-siding cads, they sure have a way with words, even if they can't friggin' add or subtract.

As CBS News so helpfully noted, "Uncommitted voters are those who don't yet know who they will vote for, or who have chosen a candidate but may still change their minds."

This has stimulated my short-term memory banks.

As the ever-levelheaded Chuck Todd, also of MSNBC News, noted yesterday morning while hovering over John McCain's boa-constricting electoral map, even if every last God-fearing, mother-loving uncommitted voter miraculously darts to the Republican column, McCain would still almost certainly lose. Obama's point spread is now that yawningly chasmic.

He may have lost Joe Wurzelbacher last night -- although I can't imagine why, given, well, last night -- but that's OK. John can have Joe -- in fact Joe deserves John, if Joe failed to grasp that Barack Obama is indeed running against George W. Bush.

My favorite moment, though, requires some paraphrasing to more fully appreciate its essential silliness.

It came right after Mr. Obama suggested that he and Mr. McCain could spend the next three weeks dissecting the dark but irrelevant deeds of a once-obscure education professor, or, they could address what's actually important to the American people. At that instant, John's nostrils flared and eyes blinked uncontrollably and chest puffed and he bellowed, in effect: You're evil and you consort with terrorists and my campaign is entirely about the economy.

It was a classic instance of self-contradiction that even Dan Webster likely would have chuckled over and surely would have caught. But then again, Dan was never clever enough to utter, "There you go again," or "You're running against William Henry Harrison and Tyler, too," or some such equally profound witticism.

McCain did manage to get one thing right, however -- partially right, anyway -- and it came in his exasperated reflection that "the whole premise behind Senator Obama’s plans are [sic] class warfare -- let’s spread the wealth around."

It is scarcely class warfare, of course, to envision and encourage through policy a fair, just and equitable society, especially one that has been warred against by the upper class and in-office plutocrats for the better part of the last 30 years. But merely from a clinically socially scientific point of view, one should be able to quickly comprehend that if we don't spread the hoarded wealth around, especially in these hardest of times, there won't be much more of it to trickle down, bubble up or self-generate.

Senator McCain, if you wanted to run against Franklin D. Roosevelt, you should have run three score and 16 years ago, when you were still in your prime.