It Ain't Funny, McCain

Seventy-two is not the new fifty.... just ask the nervous John McCain handlers who aren't quite sure how to package the old coot who brags about being computer illiterate and "older than dirt" and visits our TV screens with his "wispy comb-over, the stilted grins, and blank expressions."

How good a visual was it on Memorial Day when McCain hosted some of his vice president hopefuls in Arizona and the ever-present cameras caught his wife helping him down the stairs.... a solicitous younger woman escorting her doddering elder.

Apparently thinking this image is a selling point, McCain slap-sticks along, joking on Saturday Night Live that we should be looking for someone "very, very, very, old" for our next president.

Charles M. Blow makes the case for McCain dropping the standup-comic approach to holding the most powerful job in the world in "I'm So Old, (Insert Punch Line)." (New York Times)

Yet, McCain seems eager to call his 46-year-old opponent Barack Obama a "young man." Does he mean like president John Kennedy? Was he a "young man" when he took office at age 43?

What that comment actually points out is how late McCain has come to the presidential party.... the vigor candles are blown, the "change" balloons released, and all that is left are the discarded ribbons and bows of his ambitions.

With the mess the country finds itself in thanks to the Bush/McCain policies, it is doubtful many voters are in the mood to be entertained by a cigar-exploding George-Allen-wanna-be president.