Watching the final debate tonight, I was struck by how wired John McCain looked. Reading the commentary and liveblogs afterward, nearly everyone seemed to attribute his jitters and energy to mere anger or frustration. Certainly, he was angry and frustrated at times. But to my eye, it seemed like he was seriously hopped up on goofballs.
I'm talking amphetamines, son. Whether herbal like ephedra (aka 'Mormon Tea') or pharmaceutical, it looked to me like Senator McCain was jolted on more than just an extra cup of Joe, if you know what I mean.
Look at the way he's described by livebloggers and pundits—the raw descriptions sound all too familiar to anyone who's spent time around a speed freak:
Ezra Klein:
"At times, he can hardly sit still in his chair. ... Watching him try to stay seated is like watching a furious child try and obey a timeout. He can hardly hold still. ... McCain was grimacing, twitching, blinking, sighing, smirking, eye-rolling. Scores of YouTubers are, as we speak, constructing videos that will be nothing but a three minute collection of McCain's angry tics. They will make Gore's affectations in 2000 look mild."
Kevin Drum
"He was flitting from point to point all night without ever putting together a coherent argument, and then grabbing miscellaneous attacks from the rolodex in his head whenever some bright idea popped into his mind. His energy level was weirdly erratic, tired at times but then suddenly perking up whenever he got annoyed by something and remembered some zinger that he wanted to fire off."
"McCain's facial expressions were truly bizarre. He went from angry to annoyed to smug to laughing to grumpy to grinning and then went through the cycle all over again. It was very, very weird."
"The CNN panel seems to think that McCain showed a lot of "energy," but I just don't think it came across that way most of the time. I think it came across as jumpy, seething, and, yes, erratic. Not good."
Josh Marshall:
"McCain is there just looking like he's seething -- stiff, like he can barely contain himself."
"A lot of the time, when Obama's talking and they have the split screen, McCain looks like he's about to explode. Not always, and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic. But he frequently looks like he's about to snap. Not going nuts, but like he's seething and just holding it in."
Michael Grunwald:
"Mccain is gritting his teeth so hard they're going to come out his chin."
Now, I'm not a doctor or anything, and I certainly have no way of knowing beyond an experienced judgment based on observation at a distance. But I'm even more curious than ever to see McCain's full medical records.