Weekly Commentary -- The John McCain Clown Show

Empire Notes
By Rahul Mahajan

Welcome to the desert of the political. In the vast Saharan stretch devoid of inspiration, interest, or, indeed, any signs of life but the gag reflex that has been this summer’s presidential campaign there has been only one bright spot: the comedic stylings of the John McCain clown show.

It’s hard to know where to begin. Just keeping up with McCain’s sophisticated, multifaceted push for the brain-dead voter has become a full-time job.

You could look to last week, which juxtaposed Barack Obama’s stirring if empty “Ich bin ein World Citizener” speech to 200,000 in Berlin’s Tiergarten, where he beautifully sugarcoated a call for Europeans to send more troops to kill and die in Afghanistan and got them to love him for it with John McCain’s failed photo-op in the utterly dramatic venue of a grocery store, where he was upstaged by a guy dropping pickle jars all over the floor and where the “random shopper” he talked to was actually supplied by the local Republican Party. Deviousness in the service of incompetence: that is the face of the new Republican Party.

Or perhaps we should consider the jaw-dropping stupidity and dishonesty of McCain’s last two campaign ads. In the first, he actually says Barack Obama is the reason for high gas prices. Perhaps it was Obama who also caused the decline of the witty, light-hearted romantic comedy.

If you thought he couldn’t top that, Jake Tapper of ABC’s description of his second ad says it all: “New McCain Ad Bashes Obama for Not Visiting Troops Using Footage of Obama Visiting Troops

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