I was wandering around the internet tonight and came across this gem over on Mark Halperin's The Page.
The headline read:
McCain to Court Women In Wisconsin Friday
The tag read:
The presumptive GOP nominee holds a midday town hall meeting in Hudson at J&L Steel Erectors.
Think about it. McCain has a meltdown on the viagra question Thursday,
then on Friday he goes on the road and does one of his town hall meetings at a place called Steel Erectors.
Jay Leno's writers couldn't do better than that.
During the Democratic Campaign there were discussions in my circles over when the Hillary campaign jumped the shark. Was it the time she thought she was Rocky? Was it the time she was introduced by a guy who said he liked her because she had testicular fortitude? Or was it the times she decided she had ducked sniper fire in Bosnia? In a way it doesn't matter. At some point her campaign became a dramafest spiced by regular, predictable episodes that kept comedy writers plenty busy.
And to be fair - Obama had his moments as well - think Rev. Wright - but he never hit critical mass.
Now comes McCain. I thought there was a good chance he'd make Hillary look like a warm up act, but I never figured it'd be this good, this soon.
There is now already a chance that his campaign has jumped the shark. There were the tiny rumblings in June with his performance in Louisiana the night Obama clinched. Then there were the Lieberman episodes on that Middle East tour where he couldn't quite get the hang of Purim. I think he decided it was some kind of Jewish Halloween thing. There were a string of minor scandals and forget me not episodes leading to first really bad omen - major staff shake ups.
Now even with his new, improved staff, we see a cascade of increasingly funny misfires. In just one 24 hour period, the Dr. Phil thing is topped by the Fiorina/Viagra episode. Of the two the Viagra is better/worse.
Aside from the serious medical insurance unfairness Carly Fiorina spoke of, McCain is a fine, American hero of a certain age. He and his campaign do not want his name and the word viagra in the same sentence for any reason. Let alone a video of his pained expressions as his name and the word viagra flow by in the crawl underneath.
Once a candidate's campaign jumps the shark and becomes a fiasco, the MSM become like the bad crowd urging the suicidal boy on the ledge to jump. Hillary almost succeeded in resurrecting herself and then she got out to South Dakota and came up with her "anything can happen" moment.
If I am right and McCain's campaign jumped the shark this week, he can only hope to pull off a post-shark recovery as well or better than Hillary's.