John McCain was at his most tragic this morning on "Meet the Press" when he tried to name the former Secretaries of State who endorsed him. "Henry Kissinger, Jim Baker, Larry Eagleburger. . . . " He stopped, flustered, and tried again.
"Henry Kissinger, Jim Baker, Larry Eagleburger . . . and one more." He tried to laugh.
But as we've seen, it's getting hard for McCain to laugh these days. It would be easy to feel sorry for him, had he not run such an unrelentingly divisive, hollow and hateful campaign.
There was another moment early on, when Tom Brokaw pinned McCain to the wall on some of that -- when he flat out discredited his claims that Obama's economic plan was socialist.
Video below the fold.
I guess I just learned the hard and panicky way that embedding MSNBC clips does not work, so check this clip out right here.
The clip's too long, but it gets to the heart of the issue: How can McCain call Obama's tax plan socialist when he himself advocated it, not once but twice, as captured on video, in the last several years?
That was the McCain we used to sort of grudgingly respect. This is the McCain who tried to harness the worst instincts of the Republican base to win an office that urgently needs to bring out the best in his all.
Which is why he can still defend Sarah Palin, after Brokaw recites her soaring unfavorable ratings. And what about that wardrobe?
That clip is here.
Here's the embed code for that -- which looked just fine when I previewed the diary!:
<iframe height="339" width="425" src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/27387099#27387099" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
Wassup MSNBC? Or is it our fault?
Witness, my friends, McCain on the edge.
Thank you Kossacks for your support through this difficult diary-posting time. I didn't know about the MSNBC problem.