A Little Of The Old In And Out



(image via digitaljournalist)

In: Resolved -- John McCain Is Corny. The creepy smile, the constipated look at the lectern during pressers -- all these things and more suggest profound media negatives for any Presidential candidate in a hyper-media era. And, to top it all off, tonight there will be laughs. And those laughs will come at the expense of Senator John McCain's crusty comparison today of Barack Obama to the Carter administration (Why not -- nyuknyuknyuk -- Rutherford B. Hayes?).

Clearly, Senator John McCain is not cool. He is a war hero, yes, but he is one extraordinarily corny motherfucking war hero. And his mic skills, as our favorite Dickensian villain Robert Novak notes, are less than pimp:

"Sen. John McCain had just begun his speech from Kenner, La., on the year's last primary election night when distraught Republicans began e-mailing each other this message: Is it possible at this late hour for our presidential candidate to learn to read a TelePrompTer?

"McCain's strategists, concerned that he has been out of the spotlight for months while Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton battled for the Democratic nomination, long ago planned to get some national attention Tuesday night. But McCain looked uncomfortable addressing a few hundred supporters at the dreary Pontchartrain Center in the New Orleans suburb."

If Robert Novak is throwing what can only be properly construed as the equivalent of literary produce at you for your mic skills, you know that -- as a corny Republican -- something needs to be changed.



Out: The Gas Windfall Profits Tax. It sounded like a good idea, at least the way it was presented. But this is an election year, and legislation crafted along political lines tends to fall largely along party lines as well. And it fell in the Senate, 51-43, falling short of the needed 60 votes. From ABCNews:

"The Democratic proposal, called the 'Consumer-First Energy Act,' was a grab bag of measures that Democrats cobbled together a month ago as gas prices were rising. At the time, the plan was meant as a counter-measure to a Republican plan that sought to encourage domestic oil exploration. Democrats in May voted down the Republican oil exploration plan, which would have done little for gas prices in the short term.

"The Democrats' plan would also have done little in the near term."