This won’t be the last time you see this video of McCain from 2000. Obama’s media guys will certainly loop it ad nauseum.
Transcript:
JIM LEHRER: Finally, for the record, you have not lost your desire to be President of the United States, have you?
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Certainly it’s been put in deep cold storage.
JIM LEHRER: But you haven’t lost it?
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, in 2004, I expect to be campaigning for the reelection of President George W. Bush, and by 2008, I think I might be ready to go down to the old soldiers home and await the cavalry charge there.
Now Barack Obama may be too young to remember the 2000 election. He was still four years away from the start of his U.S. Senate career. Of course he had been an underpaid state senator in Illinois for three long years by that time, collecting all the loose change (and hope) he could find. He may have read somewhere that a Senator named John McCain ran for president that year and was beaten by Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.
By 2000, John McCain had attended the Naval Academy, had that whole Vietnam thing, you know the shot-down, tortured POW serving your country thing. Oh yeah, he received a few military decorations along the way, including the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart, and Distinguished Flying Cross. And by 2000 he had served in Congress for 18 years (14 as a Senator) and sat on the Armed Services Committee.
Now if Obama wants to make age an issue, McCain could borrow the Gipper’s line from 1984, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Which was funny when Reagan said it to the middle-aged Mondale. The scary part is that McCain probably should do just that with Obama.
But it may turn out that McCain was telling the truth in 2000 after all. Maybe the address of the Old Soldiers Home is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
H/T Crooks and Liars
Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room
Bill Dupray is a lawyer living in Northern Virginia.
“The address of the Old Soldiers Home is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Good line. And they don’t accept residents there who have no experience and even less judgement.
Bill Clinton was right about one thing: Obama is a “fairy tale” based on empty rhetoric.
McCain can clean his clock if he’s not afraid to get tough.
Lots of Old Soldiers have certainly lived there. When they move in, the uniforms go in the closet and they toss the empty suits.
I don’t think age will be at all an issue Obama will accent. What will be heavily accented will be stuff like this:
While here at FA that has been much accord over Obama’s ties to the Rev. Wright and how it will damage his presidential hopes, along with Obama’s remarks about “bitter” small-town Americans this shows the very high negatives McCain gets as he rubs up against Bush.
But according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, the bigger problem appears to be John McCain’s ties to President Bush. In the survey, 43 percent of registered voters say they have major concerns that McCain is too closely aligned with the current administration contrasted with Obama’s 36% too closely aligned with Wright.
The reality of the McBush relationship is manifesting itself here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121185084455621623.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us&apl=y&r=633085
The WSJ didn’t mention this ditty:
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/05/19/daily77.html?jst=b_ln_hl
The central political issue will be defined primarily around associations: McCain and Bush, Obama and Wright; this is the heavy weight weaponry, age, lobbyists, flip-flops, etc. …they are near blanks compared to this; this is the ‘Dukakus Tank Ride’ for McCain and it will last the entire race.