{"id":16036,"date":"2008-06-29T10:30:08","date_gmt":"2008-06-29T14:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16036.html"},"modified":"2008-06-29T10:30:08","modified_gmt":"2008-06-29T14:30:08","slug":"mccain-struggles-when-asked-about-the-price-of-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccain-struggles-when-asked-about-the-price-of-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain struggles when asked about the price of gas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Substantively, a story like this one<\/a> is fairly low on the priority list. Politically, a story like this one can cause a candidate a bit of a headache.<\/p>\n

John McCain kind of stepped in it the other day, here in California, but luckily no one noticed. He was being driven from John Wayne airport to a fundraiser, and he took a quick call from Martin Wisckol of the Orange County Register. Wisckol asked him a series of softball questions so tedious McCain’s driver had to crack the window so the breeze would keep him from passing out, but then this:<\/p>\n

WISCKOL: I’d like to ask you a couple questions suggested by voters here. They’re not reporter-type questions. <\/p>\n

McCAIN: Sure. It’d be a pleasure.<\/p>\n

WISCKOL: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost? <\/p>\n

McCAIN: Oh, I don’t remember. Now there’s Secret Service protection. But I’ve done it for many, many years. I don’t recall and frankly, I don’t see how it matters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In all candor, I’m inclined to cut McCain at least some slack on this one. McCain hasn’t been in a position to pump his own gas for a while, by virtue of his candidacy. (I don’t really expect a 71-year-old presidential candidate to jump out and fill up the tank on a campaign bus.) And while he probably should have a general sense of the price of a gallon of gas — he couldn’t say, “About four bucks”? — McCain almost certainly knows that it’s gone up quite a bit lately, and consumers\/voters aren’t happy about it.<\/p>\n

In fact, I’m far<\/i> more concerned about McCain having a ridiculous energy policy than I am about McCain being clueless about the price at the pump. McCain has recently talked about coastal drilling, a “gas-tax holiday,” and some kind of battery bounty. Most of his remarks contradict his previous positions, don’t make any sense, and\/or have led to him to get confused about what constitutes a “short-term” benefit. Whether McCain knows the price of a gallon of gas or not is trivia compared to his humiliating incoherence on energy policy.<\/p>\n

That said, voters seem to care about whether a presidential candidate is out of touch, especially in a political environment in which the word “elitist” is being thrown around. And on this, McCain might be in trouble.
\n
\nThere was a famous incident in Florida in 1992, when then-President George H.W. Bush was reportedly “amazed” when he saw a supermarket scanner. This was immediately seized on as evidence that Bush was hopelessly out of touch and had been away from “real life” far too long.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, Bush got a raw deal on this one, and the story didn’t stand up well<\/a> to scrutiny. (Bush was apparently impressed by a scanner that could read torn labels, not the regular ol’ scanners we see all the time.) Nevertheless, it became a symbolic moment that undermined his candidacy.<\/p>\n

Likewise, McCain might have to worry about the same perceptions. He’s extremely wealthy, thanks to his wife’s family fortune, and owns seven homes. He’s been in Congress for a quarter of a century, and has been a Beltway fixture for about three decades. He routinely travels on his wife’s jet, and his lifestyle leads to mockery like this:<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Given this, maybe someone on McCain’s team can let him know what Americans pay for a gallon of gas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Substantively, a story like this one is fairly low on the priority list. Politically, a story like this one can cause a candidate a bit of a headache. John McCain kind of stepped in it the other day, here in California, but luckily no one noticed. He was being driven from John Wayne airport to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}