Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

McCain’s Muddled Memory

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McCain earned his nickname McCranky afresh in a press session today.  The reporter was asking about an alleged conversation he had in 2004 with John Kerry.  Subject: McCain as Kerry’s VP.  Ooh, bad memory for someone trying to fasten down his fundie bona fides!  It sent him into this testy exchange:

“Everybody knows that I had a private conversation. Everybody knows that, that I had a conversation,” McCain told the reporter. “And you know it, too. No. You know it, too. No. You do know. You do know.”

The reporter…was following up on a question McCain had answered at a campaign event Friday morning in Atlanta. Asked if he might consider Kerry as a running mate, since Kerry asked him in 2004, McCain said no.

Afterward, on a campaign flight, Bumiller said she looked in the Times’ archives and that McCain had denied talking with Kerry in a May 2004 story.

McCain interrupted, saying that everyone knew he had a private conversation, and he kept interrupting as she tried to follow up. McCain clearly was irate.

Ok, we all have bad days on the campaign trail, right?  But what followed wasn’t so much irate McCranky-talk as the ramblings of Ol’ Man John, who will apparently believe whatever he thinks the Jonses believe whenever he himself can no longer access his addled memory banks.  Because, you know, a conversation about being a VP pick for the other party is not exactly something forgettable.  So either he’s addled, or he’s embarrassed to be reminded while whoring for fundie support.  Let’s listen in:

“I don’t know what you read or heard of, and I don’t know the circumstances,” McCain said. “Maybe in May of ’04 I hadn’t had a conversation.”

Did he recall the conversation? “I don’t know, but it’s well-known that I had the conversation. It’s absolutely well-known by everyone. So do you have a question on another issue?”

Asked again about the conversation, McCain said, “No. No. Because the issue is closed, as far as I’m concerned. Everybody knows it. Everybody knows it in America.”

Next, he actually said something that I think we can all agree on:

Could he describe the conversation? “No, of course not,” McCain said. “I don’t describe private conversations. Why should I? Then there’s no such thing as a private conversation.”

Fair enough.  Except…how could he refuse to describe a conversation he doesn’t remember having?  A real head-scratcher, that!

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Comments

  1. I tire of hearing him described as a maverick or a straight-talker, when his voting record is far-right conservative.

  3. I lost all remaining respect I had for “war hero McCain” when he voted against a bill that would forbid the CIA from torturing people by drowning them on a waterboard.  After the bill passed despite his negative vote, McCain advised Bush to veto it.

    Arizona Sen. John McCain said President Bush should veto a measure that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on terrorist suspects.

    McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, voted against the bill, which would restrict the CIA to using only the 19 interrogation techniques listed in the Army field manual.

    His vote was controversial because the manual prohibits waterboarding – a simulated drowning technique that McCain also opposes – yet McCain doesn’t want the CIA bound by the manual and its prohibitions.

    McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, is well-known for his opposition to waterboarding, which puts him at odds with the Bush administration.

    If this is how he stands in opposition to waterboarding, I’d hate to see what him embracing it would look like.  Now Bush is announcing that he will indeed veto  the ban bill.

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    p>It is no wonder that McCain is courting the right-most fundamentalists crazies, because he surly knows that any dem and independent moderates he might have lured in will slam the door on him now for good.

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