Angry McCain interviews with the Des Moines Register
McCain did an interview yesterday with the Des Moines Register which was videotaped.
This can only be viewed as the posture of a candidate who's both worried and angry about the turns his campaign have taken.
Frankly I'd be angry too if the economic policies I'd supported for the last quarter of a century had just been revealed to have tanked the country's economy and had a running mate who spewed nonsense every time she opened her mouth.
Depending on which poll you look at, Obama leads McCain by an 8-14 point spread in Iowa.
Watch it, AFTER THE JUMP...
Posted Oct. 1,2008 at 9:35 AM EST by Andy Towle in Barack Obama, Election 2008, Iowa, John McCain, News | Permalink
that is the real mccain... an angry, bitter man whose back is against the wall.
Posted by: nic | Oct 1, 2008 9:51:56 AM
How very presidential.
Posted by: David D. | Oct 1, 2008 9:58:29 AM
Someone's gettin a lil pissy!
Posted by: todd | Oct 1, 2008 9:59:58 AM
I think he needs a nap.
Really folks this guy tells us that his poll numbers are dropping and he doesn't understand why... For someone who claims to be in touch with the American people he just doesn't seem to understand.
Posted by: CLEMSONAJ | Oct 1, 2008 10:09:25 AM
Really? He hasn't detected people's dissatisfaction with his choice of running mate? "Good luck" to the "detractors"?
I wish the reporter had had the nerve to say, "There are some people who are uncomfortable with the fact that your running mate sounds like a complete idiot every time she opens her idiot mouth."
I bet his head would have exploded.
Posted by: Meanwhile | Oct 1, 2008 10:12:06 AM
"She's been a member of the PTA."
He actually said that with a straight face. I'm impressed.
This man is scary. Picking Palin shows he doesn't have a lot of respect for women.
Posted by: Cadence | Oct 1, 2008 10:12:59 AM
Oh, the cocktail party conservatives are suddenly not "your" conservatives? Really...
And the American people are siding with you? Um, dude, are you headless?
Posted by: LD | Oct 1, 2008 10:15:16 AM
Where's your news report on ACORN driving around the homeless to register and vote multiple times at multiple voting stations through out Ohio or registering dead people. Didn't Obama's law firm represent them. Oh and what about the VP debate moderator Gwen Ifill, who has a pro Obama book coming out in just a few months.
Posted by: nobama | Oct 1, 2008 10:24:18 AM
when it comes down to basics, like most republicans, he's is ultimately not a likable person... period.
Posted by: America Ferrera | Oct 1, 2008 10:28:06 AM
Nobama/Liz/Leah/Biden Time, where have you been?!
We need our updates on the polls. How's McCain doing nationally? And in the battleground states?
Your guy's totally kicking ass, right?
Please, do let us know what's going on.
Posted by: 24play | Oct 1, 2008 10:36:12 AM
Although polls continue to show a modest, even reversible lead for the Democrats, it’s going to be a landslide. The very high and richly deserved bitterness to the Republicans is going to bury them, in the absence of a sensational October Surprise.
Then the Democrats inherit a rock and a hard place, and the political bone crushing begins.
The rock is an unwinnable war that Obama’s promised to win in Iraq. He refuses to withdraw. Surrounded by Clinton’s warhawk advisors, Obama promises to go on the offensive in Pakistan and Afghanistan, like Nixon did in Cambodia and Laos, and with the same disastrous but easily predictable results. A combination of escalation in Afghanistan, where the Karzai collaborationist regime is about to fall and continued US military incursions into Pakistan will fail without question.
Pakistan is a very unfriendly and unwilling ‘ally’ of the US and a fully operational nuclear power. They had no qualms about selling nuclear technology to Iran and Korea. Pakistan’s government, like Karzai’s, is in deep crisis. The Pakistani military are humiliated by their government’s abject cowardice in the face of US strong arm tactics and their refusal to defend their citizens from US airborne murder squads. That won’t last too much longer. A further escalation in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which Obama promises, is an invitation to nuclear disaster.
Then there’s that hard place, an economy in deep failure mode. The only debate is whether we’ll descend into depression or be in for decades of enforced austerity and increasing authoritarianism as the coprortate rich and their political toadies in both parties shift the weight of the economic crisis onto our backs. By the end of this year the national debt, not counting losses from the various bailouts will total somewhere between $12.5 trillion and $15 trillion dollars.
The weight of that burden will end social programs for decades, leave us floundering as the environmental crisis escalates in scary new territory and depress our standard of living even more. It will inevitably lead to more authoritarianism, more FISAs, more Paytriot acts.
The Democrats and Republicans are the Parties that be identified with the rocks and the hard places. The left will make sure of that. They’re already extinct.
Posted by: Bill Perdue | Oct 1, 2008 10:41:53 AM
I'd be cranky too if I couldn't take a crap without two glasses of warm prune juice every morning, if I could raise my arms in protest over my head, and if my face looked like a piece of butchery. Oh, yeah, and if I were being called out on the horrible decisions I have made in my job over the past quarter-century and finally being made held accountable for them. Yeah, that'd make me cranky too. Poor, McDouche. :(
Posted by: ADHD-TV | Oct 1, 2008 10:42:40 AM
Unfortunately, for all of us, La Palin is not running for VP of the PTA. This video only hints at the real McCain that those of us who have been unfortunate enough to have had to try to work with him in DC--because he was Chairman of the oversight committee--came to know: volatile, unpredictable, vindictive, foul tempered and mouthed. I remain hopeful that his true personality will come through in the remaining weeks. His choice of Palin is s.o.p. in that he consults and trusts only himself. Even the MSM which was, in large part, the creator of the maverick myth is slowly admitting their delusion. I hope that it is not too late.
Posted by: rudy | Oct 1, 2008 10:43:23 AM
I meant "couldn't raise" in my above comment. Sorry for screwin up the joke.
Posted by: ADHD-TV | Oct 1, 2008 10:43:59 AM
First let me say I'm not a McCain supporter. Obama has my vote. Still, I watched this expecting to see some real anger but all I saw was a guy getting annoyed with a reporter's line of questions. I think he chooses not to see what a train wreck the Palin nomination has turned out to be, but in light of that I don't think his responses were out of line or particularly angry..... I'm just sayin'.....
Posted by: Paul | Oct 1, 2008 10:47:44 AM
In defense of Palin, McCain says Franklin Roosevelt didn't address the American people on television during his presidency. According to www.tvhistory.tv, there were approx. 2000 tv sets in homes and businesses in 1939. Production was banned during WWII. So, no I guess he wouldn't have. Desperate times call for desperate distractions.
Posted by: Tim | Oct 1, 2008 10:52:01 AM
I'd agree Paul but you can clearly see he's pissed and is holding back his very famous rage. With a month to go you can expect to see the real McAnger come out.
I'm going to make some popcorn.
Posted by: patrick nyc | Oct 1, 2008 11:02:03 AM
PTA!
Posted by: Juan | Oct 1, 2008 11:13:16 AM
"Do you dismiss them..."
"Sure!.."
"No, I don't dismiss them..."
So does he dismiss them or not? Why can't this guy make up his flippin' mind??
Posted by: lodenmuse | Oct 1, 2008 11:14:05 AM
I didn't see anger...focused testiness, perhaps. I thought he was restrained under the present turn of events: his campaign is tanking because of the Wall Street mess and Sarah was an embarrassment in the Coric interviews. To paraphrase a Conservative columnist - Palin's out of her league. It was telling that McCain won't acknowledge George Will's and David Brooks' distain for his VP pick.
Posted by: Jack Scribe | Oct 1, 2008 11:19:46 AM
Tim, McCain's comment about FDR and television was a reference to Joe "Gaffe-a-Day" Biden. Biden said that Roosevelt went on TV in 1929 to explain the Depression to people. Of course, Roosevelt wasn't President in 1929 and there were no TV's. Oops.
As for the rest of the interview, I think that this is a side of McCain that is well-known on Capitol Hill, where he is called Senator Hothead. You can see him getting angry and controlling his temper. When not on camera, he loses it and erupts. One can see that he gets irritable, cranky, and mean. I wish more people could see this side of him. It's not pretty.
As for Obama, he is apparently always even-tempered. By nature, he likes to keep in control. Even from insiders, I've never heard a story of him really losing his cool. He gets pissed, of course, but doesn't boil over as McCain does.
Posted by: gr8guyca | Oct 1, 2008 11:23:55 AM
Paul, you are right about the early days of television. Roosevelt DID, however, have fireside chats on the radio. Radio was a more ubiquitous medium in his time.
I was a bit surprised by this comment by McCain.
Posted by: voet | Oct 1, 2008 11:24:28 AM
Voet, see my previous comment. McCain was making reference to a Biden gaffe.
Posted by: gr8guyca | Oct 1, 2008 12:29:17 PM
Uh, when he says that a governor came out of Arkansas (with a population four times that of Alaska, btw) "who didn't have the experience" is he referring to Bill Clinton's experience as leader the Texas McGovern campaign, two years as state Attorney General, or TWELVE years as governor? But I guess being on the PTA and serving two years as the governor of Alaska is about equivalent to all that... right?
Posted by: SkiFan08 | Oct 1, 2008 12:44:09 PM
NIC
Exactly. One of his own repub senators said "a chill went up my spine" when mcshame got the nomination.
He has major anger issues. He is erratic, angry, and a gambler. If nothing else, the one main thing about Obama that is a plus is his steady calm manner.
New poll out today has Obama winning Florida and Ohio.
:-)
Don't be complacent guys, but it is ok to smile and sigh in relief.
Posted by: Jimmyboyo | Oct 1, 2008 1:05:49 PM