This won’t be the last time you see this video of McCain from 2000. Obama’s media guys will certainly loop it ad nauseum.
Transcript:
JIM LEHRER: Finally, for the record, you have not lost your desire to be President of the United States, have you?
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Certainly it’s been put in deep cold storage.
JIM LEHRER: But you haven’t lost it?
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, in 2004, I expect to be campaigning for the reelection of President George W. Bush, and by 2008, I think I might be ready to go down to the old soldiers home and await the cavalry charge there.
Now Barack Obama may be too young to remember the 2000 election. He was still four years away from the start of his U.S. Senate career. Of course he had been an underpaid state senator in Illinois for three long years by that time, collecting all the loose change (and hope) he could find. He may have read somewhere that a Senator named John McCain ran for president that year and was beaten by Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.
By 2000, John McCain had attended the Naval Academy, had that whole Vietnam thing, you know the shot-down, tortured POW serving your country thing. Oh yeah, he received a few military decorations along the way, including the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart, and Distinguished Flying Cross. And by 2000 he had served in Congress for 18 years (14 as a Senator) and sat on the Armed Services Committee.
Now if Obama wants to make age an issue, McCain could borrow the Gipper’s line from 1984, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Which was funny when Reagan said it to the middle-aged Mondale. The scary part is that McCain probably should do just that with Obama.
But it may turn out that McCain was telling the truth in 2000 after all. Maybe the address of the Old Soldiers Home is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
H/T Crooks and Liars
Bill Dupray at The Patriot Room
Bill Dupray is a lawyer living in Northern Virginia.