Worst Candidate Ever?
John McCain has often joked that he is so popular with the corporate-owned media that he considers Beltway reporters to be his “base.” This decades-long courtship is paying off big time this year, as reporters persistently look the other way as McCain suffers one self-inflicted wound after another.
Imagine the reaction in the corporate media — not to mention among the howler monkeys on rightwing radio — if Barack Obama had offered his wife up for a stripper show.
A prime example of this is McCain’s performance at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota last weekend. As you can see in the video above, especially starting at about 03:15, this was hands-down the most embarassing performance by a presidential candidate since Howard Dean’s purported “scream” at a rally in 2004.
What really happened to Dean, of course, was that his supporters in the room were cheering so loudly that he was yelling into a “hot” mike to be heard over the din. It was clear to most television viewers watching that night, however, that the “scream” would kill Dean’s campaign because cablenewsers would be unable to resist playing it rotation as often as possible for weeks to come. In fact, they still run it when the opportunity arises.
By contrast, other than on MSNBC shows hosted by Keith Olbermann and Dan Abrams, the video of McCain’s humiliating performance at Sturgis has barely made a blip in cable news rotations.
McCain’s campaign made an equally egregious mistake at Sturgis, as shown in the video — a little earlier than McCain’s rant, at around 02:35 — when his operatives set him up to offer his wife Cindy as a contestant in the bikers’ annual “Miss Bufffalo Chip” beauty pageant. As we reported earlier this week, the “pageant” is more like a live show produced by Hustler magazine than, certainly, Miss America.
What is important to notice in the clip is that this was not an ad lib gone wrong — McCain was reading from prepared remarks as he pimped his wife out to strip for the bikers.
Imagine how the media would have reacted if any Democratic candidate had turned in a performance as awful as McCain’s in Sturgis. And worse, imagine the reaction in the corporate media — not to mention among the howler monkeys on rightwing radio — if Barack Obama had offered his wife up for a stripper show.
Besides the Miss Buffalo Chip crap, which I already had my say over, what really gets me in this speech is the AUDACIOUS HYPOCRISY of Sen. McCain, who has been MIA from his day job since he hit the campaign trail, giving a speech about how those people in Congress need to get to work. Hello? Is anyone listening to this? How can this man stand on a stage 2,000 miles from his office in the Senate and criticize his fellow senators for not being there? When is John McCain planning to “get to work?”
I’ve reached a point where a John McCain speech is as unlistenable to me as a George Bush one. As soon as he starts talking, I reach for the dial.
Apparently, McCain has not been on the Senate floor since April 8, so four months today.
McCain and his handlers must have seen this as a great photo-op. There’s really no other reason for him to be there. Personally, I think his handlers missed it again. His PR staff also knows how hard to control he is - seems that he prefers to talk off the cuff instead of to his points / script. So what brainiac thought that putting him in front of 50,000 bikers was a good idea? They had to know the speach would go AWOL, and for him to offering his wife up as the next “Miss Buffalo Chip” was a huge blunder. John, it’s time to retire.