In a scalding rebuke to Obama's oft-repeated line that John McCain is running for George Bush's third term, the Senator from Arizona today opened up a new and damaging line of attack, comparing Obama to the nation's fourteenth president. "If I'm running for George Bush's third term," McCain awkwardly stated as he simultaneously grinned, growled, laughed and smiled, "then he's running for Franklin Pierce's second term."
The reference to one of the nation's worst and ineffectual presidents was lost on most of the pool reporters, who, after sitting silently and looking around the room uncomfortably, finally got the nerve to ask Senator McCain for clarification.
"Pierce. Franklin Pierce. You know, defeated Winfield Scott - Old Fuss and Feathers - in the election of 1852? Hello? Ring any bells? The guy who signed the Ostend Manifesto? Secret document describing a plan to purchase Cuba from Spain?"
This is not the first time McCain has used a somewhat outdated reference to open a line of attack on Obama. Last month, after Obama's appearance in North Carolina in which he mimicked Jay-Z's brushing "dirt" off of his shoulder, McCain held a rally in Connecticut in which he sang a line of lyrics from Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy, first made famous by Ella Fitzgerald:
If you wanna do right by your appetite,
If you're fussy about your food,
Take a choo-choo today, head New England way,
And we'll put you in the happiest mood. with:
Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy
(**McCain-style jazz hands**)
McCain followed up the odd lyrics by linking sweet and delicious shoo fly pie with a McCain presidency, and by insinuating that only someone who is not fussy about their food or who has access to a choo-choo would ever vote for Obama.
The Senator from Arizona has also been caught using hobo lingo in press conferences, forcing his traveling press pool to consult their hobo dictionaries to determine the meaning of words and phrases like "California blankets" (newspapers that McCain doesn't read because of their liberal bias), "chucking a dummy" (pretending to faint in exasperation at a silly question), "sky pilots" (in reference to Rev. Hagee and Pastor Parsley), and "spear biscuits" (food found in dumpsters - in reference to America's growing poverty class).
In another recent example of the disparity between the grasp of cultural relevance between the two presidential aspirants, McCain ridiculed and cast suspicion on Obama's "fist jab" with his wife Michelle in which the two gave each other "dap" on a stage in Minneapolis. Afterwards, a clearly shaken McCain stated, "Only a fool or a fraud thinks secret handshakes are romantic. You know who else had secret handshakes? The Freemasons. And look what they did to William Morgan. Bottom of the Niagra River, bubsie." When asked who William Morgan was, McCain became visibly angry, gripped the podium with both hands, and stated slowly, "I'd like you to not speak ill or ignorantly of friends of mine."
No word yet on whether this pattern of referring back to 19th century cultural tropes is a deliberate McCain strategy or merely McCain's preferred way of relating to, as he calls it, "this current age of wonder and machines."