John McCain has had a bad week.
And when I say John McCain has had a bad week, I mean he's had a really bad week.
The week started with former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, a top McCain surrogate, discussing health care, only to veer sharply from the McCain campaign's talking points to a discussion of Viagra, while in the process seeming to stake out a new policy stance for Senator McCain:
"Let me give you a real, live example, which I've been hearing a lot about from women. There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won't cover birth control medication. Those women would like a choice," she said.
Now that statement strikes me as a blatant attack on health insurance companies for providing coverage for Viagra while denying coverage for birth control - a curious attack given the fact that John McCain has twice voted against measures that would have required insurers to cover birth control.
Now as if Fiorina's "creative license" wasn't bad enough, then came comments from John McCain's top economic advisor, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm, who called the United States "a nation of whiners" while also referring to the current economic slowdown as "a mental recession." Now maybe I'm crazy, but it seems like more than a "mental recession" when gas stands at $4.00 a gallon, milk's somewhere near $3.50 a gallon, and our nation is losing 50,000 jobs a month.
And today comes news the McCain campaign has scrubbed its website of any mention of Alabama Attorney General Troy King, who the campaign had previously announced as the Chair of the McCain 2008 Alabama campaign.
Why was any mention of Troy King scrubbed from the McCain campaign website?
Well, I'm no rocket scientist but I'm guessing it has to do with rumors he was caught in bed with another man by his wife. Obviously it's just a rumor, so I could be wrong, but it's curious that the McCain campaign would take the step of removing any mention of King from its website if there wasn't the slightest grain of truth to the rumors.
If the rumors are true, the McCain campaign will no doubt start spinning the situation furiously, but no matter what, it's been a bad week to be John McCain.
However, not to be outdone by his surrogates, McCain himself took time to stick his foot in his mouth while he pande...campaigned in Pittsburgh:
When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the physical pressures that were on me, I named the starting lineup -- defensive line -- of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron-mates.
But wait, what did McCain say about his time as a POW in Vietnam in his book Faith of My Fathers?
Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron.
Now he, I know pandering is a part of politics, but is John McCain stupid enough to think no one's going to do a little fact-checking? I know he'd like to rewrite a lot of his own personal history, but when will he learn that's easier said than done in the age of YouTube and the internet?
H/T to Jay over at Folkbum.