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McCain’s ‘This Week’ train-wreck

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I keep expecting John McCain to become a better candidate. Part of me assumes it’s inevitable — the more he campaigns, the more time he has to learn about the issues, receive policy briefings from aides, get prepped for media interviews, etc.

And yet, McCain, oddly enough, seems to be going in the opposite direction. I watched his interview with George Stephanopoulos on yesterday’s “This Week,” and kept thinking, “This guy’s the Republican presidential nominee?”

The interview was, in a sense, a great opportunity for McCain. He’s had a rough couple of weeks, with humiliating mistakes, photo-ops gone awry, obviously dishonest campaign ads, awkward whining, and a slip in the polls. An impressive, nationally-televised interview, in which McCain showed off some policy chops, might have helped McCain turn things around.

Instead, it was a train-wreck.

The first topic of discussion was Iraq.

McCain said, among other things, “I didn’t use the word ‘timetable,'” when in fact he had. McCain said, “We were greeted as liberators,” when in fact we weren’t. Asked if he was wrong about the original decision to go to war in Iraq, McCain said, “Of course not; of course not,” when in fact he was.

But my personal favorite was McCain insistence that 2007 was “the crucial time,” but weighing the merits of the decision to go to war in the first place is “a job for the historians.” According to the senator, the tactics of the war after five years is literally more important than the war itself. 2007 matters, 2003 doesn’t. Got it.

McCain, however, was just getting started.

There was this fascinating exchange on the housing crisis:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let’s talk about the economy. President Bush in — and adding some unvarnished talk recently about the economy when he didn’t think the cameras were on. I think he said, “Wall Street got drunk, and now we’re going through the hangover.” I know you don’t want to use language like that, but is his basic take right? Is Wall Street the villain here? And what would you do about it?

MCCAIN: I think that Wall Street is the villain in the things that happened in the subprime lending crisis and other areas where investigations and possible prosecution is going on. But I also think that Congress is at fault. We didn’t restrain spending. Spending got completely out of control.

When asked what government spending has to do with the housing and mortgage crisis, McCain began talking about the energy crisis and “gridlock” in Congress. It was as if McCain wasn’t paying any attention to the questions, and just started rambling on for no reason.

On a related note:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And should the government get some stock, so that if Fannie Mae does recover, the taxpayers should benefit?

MCCAIN: Absolutely. Absolutely, they should, in my view. And we’ve got to send the signal that, over time, that these kinds of institutions have not helped the American homeowner.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac haven’t helped American homeowners? Are you kidding?

When McCain started touting a “gas-tax holiday,” Stephanopoulos noted that there isn’t an economist in the country who thinks this would work, and explained that oil companies would simply absorb extra profits.

MCCAIN: [Economists] they say that. But one, it didn’t happen before, and two, we wouldn’t let it happen. We wouldn’t let it — Americans wouldn’t let them absorb that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How would you prevent that?

MCCAIN: We would make them shamed into it. We, of course, know how to — American public opinion. And we would penalize them, if necessary. But they wouldn’t. They would pass it on.

It’s like listening to a child.

On Social Security, McCain refused to acknowledge his own position, instead arguing that he’d consider anything.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, that means payroll tax increases are on the table, as well?

MCCAIN: There is nothing that’s off the table. I have my positions, and I’ll articulate them. But nothing’s off the table.

A few weeks ago, McCain said the exact opposite.

And on gay adoption, McCain initially said he’d rather let orphans go without families, then his campaign reversed course, and then yesterday McCain reversed back.

If Democrats are very lucky, McCain will do a lot of these interviews over the next 99 days.

Comments

  • Bernard HP Gilroy

    says:

    Ah, a zen kaon:

    If a train goes off the rails in a forest, and no journalist reports it, is it still a train wreck?

    My guess? Not so much. He’ll be allowed to weave, dodge, and skate past this debacle, too.

  • TomB

    says:

    If Democrats are very lucky, McCain will do a lot of these interviews over the next 99 days.

    EXACTLY!!!

  • TR

    says:

    Even “Morning Joe” was mocking his appearance this morning, splicing together McCain’s robotic repetition of “Obama doesn’t understand…” over and over again.

    The only defense Buchanan and others had — even admitting McCain looked horrible — was to insist the election is really about Obama, so McCain’s performance doesn’t matter.

  • Lew Scannon

    says:

    A scion of the privileged who hasn’t a clue about the real world. Didn’t we go through this eight years ago? Okay, McCain, Tell us again how you’re not like Bush?

  • SaintZak

    says:

    “If Democrats are very lucky, McCain will do a lot of these interviews over the next 99 days”

    John McCain will show up for the debates in similar fashion. There will be really no way for the media to spin gold from a stuttering, back-peddling, confused performance live in front of the American public.

  • keptsimple

    says:

    McCain’s not becoming a better candidate because no one is challenging him on his nonsense.

    Interviews like this only matter if the media make them a part of the larger campaign narrative. Of the relatively small number of people that watch This Week, how many do you think are undecided voters?

  • beep52

    says:

    The conservative platform has collapsed, the Straight-Talk Express is off the tracks and the Obama Train has left the station. McCain’s only hope is that the 527 Gang is able to hijack Barack before he gets to Washington.

  • angry young man

    says:

    A good observation, “robotic.” He was precisely the same way on the Today show. Viera asked a question and he rambled on with an answer often utterly disconnected with the actual question, and when she tried to follow up or cut him off to point out a mistake or inconsistence, he just kept talking, the stock answer flowing out. Clearly he’s been advised that the answer is all that’s important, not the question, whether he’s answering the question at all. Just catapult the propoganda.

  • Ohioan

    says:

    McCain (on gas tax holiday): “We would make them shamed into it”

    Video of the above + add a laugh track to it = Landslide Obama victory in November.

  • Don B

    says:

    I think Obama needs to try to force McCain into the earliest possible face-to-face debates so people can sit there with their mouths open when they compare the two. If I were his handlers, I’d be pushing it every day in every way – the more people are able to compare and contrast the two, the more McCain will lose ground.

  • Dr.Johnson

    says:

    I took the trouble to compare the transcript of this show with one from a 2004 MTP. The difference in style was startling. In 2004, McCain had long, detailed, and logically coherent answers, even if many of them were spinning for Bush. In 2008, his answers are much shorter, and even then get confused. I think any expert in senility/dementia/Alzheimer’s could diagnose the deterioration just from reading the transcripts. Something is seriously wrong with him. People close to him must realize it, but have decided to try to hide it until after the election.

  • jimBOB

    says:

    I was surprised early on at how bad a candidate McCain is. But what doesn’t surprise me is that he isn’t improving. The man is over 70, and his mind isn’t going to have a lot of ability to learn new skills. (I’m just under 50, and I can’t pick up new stuff the way I could when I was younger.) McCain’s previous career has never required that he have policy chops or a coherent view of the larger issues, just an ability to charm the childlike members of the Washington press corps one-on-one.

    In this sense McCain is a pure reflection of his party. Offering up another privileged doofus despite the disastrous results they had with the previous one, the GOP just can’t help itself, can’t learn any new tricks no matter how badly they need to. I recall back during the lead-up to the Republican debacle in 2006, it was obvious that their congressional leadership was fatally damaged and needed to be excised. Yet they just couldn’t dump Hastert & Co. no matter what horrendous crap kept coming out (Foley in particular). Another massive defeat in 2008, plus some time in the wilderness, may be what’s required to get them to see how much they need to change. Or maybe even that won’t be enough.

  • zoe from pittsburgh

    says:

    Wow. The shittiness of his performance almost makes me feel bad for McCain.

    We were greeted as liberators???

    Really???

    Obama and/or liberal 527s really should start working on the “out of touch” and “completely disconnected from reality” meme. Not to mention that he says something one day and says something completely different the next– that’s not even flip-flopping, that’s just confusion over his own policies.

  • N.Wells

    says:

    At some point, the collapse of McCain’s legitimacy as a presidential candidate will become such a big potential story that even reporters will be unable to ignore it. However, it would be nice if it happened after the conventions (and before the election).

    Obama needs to push him on his contradictions in debates and in ads – those are his best way of getting past the media.

    A good format for such an ad would be: “McCain contradicts himself again.” McCain statement 1. McCain statement 2. “Remember, the original maverick was just a lost cow.”

  • MsMuddled

    says:

    He can’t even buy his own bullshit, let alone recite rehearsed answers.

    Did anyone discover which if any meds he’s on? Or maybe he’s off the meds and we’re seeing Campaign McCain uncut and raw?

    I’m thinking he didn’t really want all those town hall debates since apparently the bastard can’t get through a mere interview without seething. He knew Obama wouldn’t consent, so they asked for an unreasonable number knowing it would be rejected. Of course he’ll be creamed corn in just one, but they can still say, “We asked for more debates but Obama said, “No”.

    Fifty debates in fifty states! Unmoderated! Let the games begin!

  • Dorothy

    says:

    Obama is taking the high road against all the McCain mudslinging, as he should, until after the conventions. Remember, Hillary still has not relinquished her delegates to Obama and the Democratic convention could turn into a real mess! I trust Obama’s campaign people, they have done a great job so far in reacting to the Republican Smear Train. Once the conventions are over the “real” action begins!

  • kevo

    says:

    Let them say what they want, but we really know this election is ALL about how Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have run our nation into the ground, while not making us safer and providing ungastly profits for their friends in the oil industry. Yes, these intrenched interests want to sell us the line that Barack Obama is the issue this year, but we’re not buying it.

    I just wonder when the MSM will realize that that dog don’t hunt no more! -Kevo

  • inthewoods

    says:

    I just hope McCain doesn’t gain on Obama on the basis of a sympathy vote – like he’s being tortured by the horribly left-biased media.

  • Carmen

    says:

    Given McCain’s lack of good press/some bad press, is it strange that gas prices have started going down? I remember this happening right before the ’06 election and it was viewed as a political move to benefit Repubs.

  • hark

    says:

    After eight years of incompetence and corruption, a crushing, sapping pointless war, an economy that is in a shambles, the most egregious disparity in wealth and income since the 1920s, a middle class that is actually worse off at the end of the Bush expansion than it was at the beginning, after eight years of its ignoring climate change and the global energy crisis, after its dismantling of one protective government agency after another, the media still has not acknowledged that Bush is a disaster, or even just a lousy president. They act surprised, dismayed, shocked and even angry when Pelosi suggests that Bush has been a failure. They acknowledge only that he’s unpopular. You’d never know tuning into the network news or cable pundit shows that there was anything unusual about the Bush presidency other than his lack of popular support.

    Forget it. They are not going to expose John McCain for what he is. And the American people are not going to see it, because they pay little attention to politics beyond sound bites in the evening news. They don’t watch the programs we do. They will not see for themselves because they haven’t the patience or interest to analyze, parse and pick his incoherent blather apart.

    Fortunately, Obama has rock star status with the media, will get plenty of attention from them, much of it positive, so we have a fighting chance to win for a change. Gore and Kerry were just too boring for them.

  • tomj

    says:

    I’m starting to worry that McCain has lost it. In Jan 2007, he talked with AEI about the surge plan, he seemed to understand lots of stuff which has recently just evaporated from his mind:

    http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.1446/transcript.asp

    Of course the transcript also confirms that McCain’s only interest is victory in Iraq, it is literally the only thing on his mind.

    Now, even questions about Iraq, devolve into a simple formula: I know how to do it, or we will do it. Most frightening is that he has a secret plan for capturing Bin Laden, but he won’t tell reporters, because it would tip off the enemy. But why not ask McCain if he should consider sharing this plan with Bush right now?

  • mellowjohn

    says:

    “We were greeted as liberators?” –zoe from pitt quoting john w. mcsame

    well of course we were, what else could all those gunshots and explosions be about? it’s just happy, child-like iraqis celebrating our continuing presence in their country.

  • Rich

    says:

    McSame is about as confused as the average uninformed voter (of which there are far too many). How many people are able (or care) to chart his endless reversals and 5th grade understanding of issues? It’s perfectly fine to have a 5th grade view of reality – if you’re in the 5th grade, which may the educational level of many Americans. Shame the oil companies into relinquishing more profit from a gas tax holiday? That doesn’t pass the laugh test, no matter how undereducated you may be. Only a fanatical ideologue would buy into something so stupid.

    As long as the media let any candidate get away with changing the subject when they can’t or don’t want to answer a question – as McSame did again – then interviews, debates, town meetings, are of little use. The Rethugs are stuck with a real dud. Again. But the Roverians and Diebold, and if necessary the Supreme Court, can do miracles.

  • karen marie

    says:

    “We would make them shamed into it. ”

    yeah, like we have been able to “shame” any of these assholes into any right action.

    if shaming worked, bush would have been gone years ago.

  • chrenson

    says:

    This is really starting to look like the early stages of Alzheimer’s. My dad got it in his early seventies. He went from being a Fulbright Scholar and professor of American History to a sweet but terribly confused child in about five years. It would not surprise me in the slightest of John McCain were facing a similar fate. And with the free world in the balance.

    This has me thinking, how often could we suspect our Republican presidents of exhibiting some sort of dementia? Reagan? Hell yeah! And Bush Jr.? Seriously addled. Maybe this is the norm for the party. Push someone forward who can be easily manipulated and then go about the work of dismantling democracy.

    Just saying.

    /conspiracy theory

  • chrenson

    says:

    And shaming Big Oil into foregoing profits?

    If you can’t shame panties onto Britney Spears, what makes you think we could shame money out of Exxon/Mobil?

  • 2Manchu

    says:

    “MCCAIN: We would make them shamed into it.”

    What are they going to do, get the oil execs’ moms to call them and say “I’m really disappointed in you.”?

  • MsJoanne

    says:

    N. Wells, you made me think of something: Obama and any 527’s should do nothing until after the convention. McCain is so lame that once he is the official (not presumptive) candidate that’s when action should be taken. I still fear goopers making a play around grampy.

  • Prup (aka Jim Benton)

    says:

    The truly scary thing is that McCain STILL is a better candidate, and might even make a better President than his rivals, Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, Huckabee, Tancredo or Hunter.

    Fortunately, we have never been in any danger of finding out, because ‘any Democrat would beat any Republican this year.’ (Okay, so maybe William Jefferson or Robert Melendez would lose to Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins. Maybe.)

  • Diogenes

    says:

    MCCAIN: [Economists] they say that. But one, it didn’t happen before, and two, we wouldn’t let it happen. We wouldn’t let it — Americans wouldn’t let them absorb that.

    When didn’t it happen before? When there were windfall profit taxes that kicked in when oil company profits grew at a rate higher than a certain percentage and then they were taxed at a higher rate? You mean back in the depression era, when FDR created all those social programs you hate? When the WPO built so much of the American infrastructure that we use today?

  • James

    says:

    McCain’s MO seems to be that it makes no difference what you say about policy, it’s how you say it. He’s not talking to the educated, he’s trying to solidify his base, so he adapts a “comforting” tone not unlike a grandfather trying to lull his little ones to sleep. Occassionally he pivots to the attack ad / “red meat” message to motivate the screeching right wing freak machine, who may agitate enough people to actually leave their homes on election day to vote for the old fella. To repeat: if you are listening, and analyzing his message, then he’s not talking to you.

  • Michael Flynn

    says:

    What a joy to stumble upon a blog overflowing with articulate educated people…and Americans by the sound..there is hope. All the news I get from America is Fox News ( I’m in Phuket Thailand ) and its very scary stuff. What is Laura Ingraham on ?? Go Obamo…Go America.

  • Annemarie

    says:

    Since today, 247 people were injured and 41 killed, in Baghdad in the worst suicide bombing in the history of Iraq and Baghdad was where “the Surge” was deployed…….I think it’s time McCain zipped it and stopped his attacks on Obama over the big success of HIS surge….as well as telling America that Maliki didn’t mean to support a 16-month timetable for troop withdrawal and HE, John McCain knows this because HE knows Maliki. So, was he accusing Maliki of being a public liar, along with accusing Obama of treason, naivete, stupidity, and poor moral character.
    These accusations are becoming odious, this little old man in the glasshouse must stop throwing stones, or he will soon be getting stoned himself. What happened to his big “civility” claim?

  • Hannah

    says:

    #26: There are other types of dementia that affect memory. I have a relative who gets things mixed up and has short term memory loss. He was a civil engineer, so is obviously very smart. But he doesn’t have Alzheimers.

    Dementia & Alzheimers robs people of so much. It’s really sad. I’m sorry to hear about your dad.

    In any case, it’s clear that McCain either has some form of dementia or he’s just saying whatever to get elected. Either one is a big problem.

  • Hannah

    says:

    #34 Michael Flynn: welcome to Carpetbagger report. Steve Benen is a very fair-minded, smart person and you will keep yourself well-informed if you read CBR daily.

  • libra

    says:

    He’s had a rough couple of weeks, with humiliating mistakes, photo-ops gone awry, — CB

    Those photo-ops, gone awry… Sorry for sounding like a blog whore, but, check out
    http://www.womenforjohnmccain.com/

    Where they get their pics from, I have no idea; maybe they photo-shop them. But they’re superb at picking up those “awry” moments. Yesterday’s posting has McCain in that shop in Bethlehem (PA, not Israel). Right in front of a case of chilled orange juice, with every carton saying Dole, Dole, Dole… How’s that for a subtle comparison to the other — equally old and equally failed — Repub presidential runner?

    Or, Straight Talk McCain giving a speech in front of the Fudge House? Or, side-by-side photos of Obama and Petraeus in an airplane and McCain and Papa Bush in a golf cart (property of 41; hands off!). And the way they fit the text to those photos is something wicked…

  • libra

    says:

    MCCAIN: We would make them shamed into it.

    And if that didn’t work, I’d sit them at a table and tell them to cut the shit.