What Should McCain Have Said?

Could any answer be worse than
"uh, it's above my pay grade".
Posted by: riley | Aug 22, 2008 9:33:05 AM

If you're simple minded, I suppose it was a bad answer.

Atrios : While the Villagers seemed to object, and it didn't go well with the audience, I was quite pleased with Obama's response that the question of when life begins is above his pay grade. I remember Pastor Tim Russert asking, I think, Claire McCaskill a similar question and she was like, "What are you asking? When does an embryo become ensouled?" Believe what you want, but the important question for politicians is how such things get translated into... policy. And when McCain says he believes life begins at conception (cheer!) it's pretty meaningless unless he's asked to explain how that would be translated into policy: Are blastocysts entitled to child support? Do all late periods need to be reported to the Ministry of Health? And, of course, my favorite: Are those who implant multiple embryos during IVF treatments, knowing full well that most will die, guilty of negligent manslaughter?

and as far as who helped who buy homes...

how about convicted felons that loaned you jets...and Bahamian home resorts to stay at...

and whom you got contracts for from your father in law

you really don't want to go down the Rezko line...

you all obviously do not know the details of mccain friendship with Keating

you know the guy who severely hurt our country and whose crimes were on the backs of working Americans...

yeah all the while Mccain is flying on his jets and vacationing at his homes...and introducing him to other Senators...

yeah bring on Rezko...

there is this Billy Club that lies on the ground with Rezko that you all obviously do not know the details of ..

it's called the Charles Keating and John Mccain's "best friendship"

Could any answer be worse than
"uh, it's above my pay grade".

pls go away

Lets put it this way

While Mccain is forgetting or not knowing how many homes he owns...

the guy who Obama is probably picking for VP is hauling his own stumps to the dump himself.

while McCain is getting into schools because his father pulled strings

Obama is working his a$$ off and getting scholarships while he is living in a modest apartment with his grandparents

while Mccain is leaving his first wife in straights to marry a millionairess blonde hottie...

KFed is leaving his first wife in straights to marry a millionairess blonde hottie

sorry KFed that's right you weren't married.

yeah sounds like propaganda but it is true.

McCain is going to say that none of his homes were financed with 300,000 grand from a lobyist and convicted felon like Mr Obama

Sorry dl, take the propaganda somewhere else.

You want to picture Obama as one of the working class, you must be redefining working class.

Cindy is rich who stole John from his crippled wife.--

And we thought divorce was legal and free of prejudices and we thought the liberal left was free of moralizing. We thought it was the conservative Christian right that we had to worry about in judging our private lives.

pls go away

Obama earned scholarships from a lot of hard work...

while he was living with his grandmother and grandfather in an apartment.

His 4 million came from his own work.

His student loans were paid by him.

His academics and achievements and getting into school all taken care of by...him.

How does a President who has no idea what the challenges FEEL like for everyday Americans trying to balance mortgages or business loans...or student loans or healthcare...or what to do about aging parents when you didn't marry(again or divorce as the case may be) into multi-millions.

John mcCain needs to have someone hold up a handful of blank tax forms, mortgage applications, student loan applications, requirements for housing for an elderly parent, in home nursing...

and even ex-vets application for government assistance for an education after one tour of duty...

or the help wanted ads for people wiothout a college education that htose soldiers have to peruse every day after "only serving one tour of duty"

and see if he can do any and all of them. See if he has even ever seen one of them...because I highly doubt he ever has.

and if that is the case...how in the heck could he ever understand what are the challenges facing...us.

Mike, your McCain = 3rd Bush term is old and tired. It doesn’t work, even on Democrats like me. As far as being called “vacuous,” I don’t take offense. People who resort to personal attacks against those with whom they disagree illustrate their own immaturity. I used to do the same thing myself – when I was an eighth grader.

John McCain .. hasn't started a business or had to pay his way through school...he married or divorced depending on how you look at it...into money after a yourth where his wealthy father took care of getting him everything he needed.-

And what has Obama worked for? His mother was able to play at "intellectual", his typical white grandmom president of a bank paid for his cushy private school, and did he work his way through Harvard? Nice job waiting for him at Rezko connection firm after graduation (not to mention Rezko had offered him a job while still in college). Obama has done ZERO work to get to where he is expect open his mouth.

the sign of a bad President is one who when an issue like financial understanding comes up...

suddenly resorts to trying to take it off topic.

you know how you can tell because mcCain is doing the exact same things as George W. Bush.

right down to trying to take the ball off what matters in his campaign...

evil men running and fooling perhaps Mccain himself.

The first thing I saw when I turned on the television news this morning was a ditzy blonde anchorwoman gushing over when Senator Obama would announce his vice president. As a Democrat, I truly never understood what the Republicans meant when they talked about liberal bias. I just flat-out didn’t see it. I can’t predict who will be President next January, but I can predict one thing with abosolute certainty: the mainstream press will continue to lose viewership to Fox News and conservative talk radio. Like millions of Democrats, I used to laugh at Fox, Hannity, etc. Now I listen to them more and more. Yeah, they’re biased in the conservative direction, and their views on the environment and a few other issues. are just plain whacked out, but they’re still more objective on most issues than ABC, NBC, CBS, Newsweek, and the rest of the left-wing press. That’s just sad. The idea of objective journalism is a myth. I guess I was just too naieve to understand that. This election has certainly opened by eyes.

John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy. Some have suggested that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet.

The media -- many of them card-carrying members of the John McCain Protection Society -- continue to paper over each new crack in the McCain-as-foreign-policy-authority myth: they love McCain, or at least the McCain they've created in their minds, and they're uncomfortable and embarrassed when the real McCain shows that he no longer has much to do with the character they've created.

John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current president. When asked what his Christian faith means to him, his answer was a one-liner. "It means I'm saved and forgiven." Great scholars have wrestled with the meaning of faith for centuries. McCain then retold a story we've all heard a hundred times about a guard in Vietnam drawing a cross in the sand.

McCain was asked to define rich. After trying to dodge the question -- his wife is worth a reported $100 million -- he finally said he thought an income of $5 million was rich.
One after another, McCain's answers were shallow, simplistic, and trite. He showed the same intellectual curiosity that George Bush has -- virtually none.

Jake the problem is...

as much as he is a war hero...

there is a huge financial aspect to being President...

so even if he said what you just stated...

I wrote this before...

It wasn't that he was lying or senile...

it is the fact that he does not know.

Whether it is because of complicating financials that he is not informed on or other...

he does not know.

How many Americans ...especially right now... can make judgments on the countries financial state without the pressure of their mortgage payments, weighing remortgaging, student loans, how their taxes are filled out, their health care being cut off and not having money for their kids, or what to do about your aging parent and the financial costs...

John McCain has none of those factors...not because he earned and had to ever go through those financial challenges...he never has. He hasn't started a business or had to pay his way through school...he married or divorced depending on how you look at it...into money after a yourth where his wealthy father took care of getting him everything he needed.

That is not spin...that is his life.

That is the point...so get mad...call Obama names... bring up other issues...but John McCain has no struggles with finances or experience EVER with struggles of financial matters to look through to understand what we need to do with this economy.

and yes, that is hugely important.

I love the Obama/Ayers ad.

Obama actually calls Ayers "respectable and mainstream".

Obama calls a guy that bombed the Pentagon, stomps the flag, and recently said he was not sorry, "respectable and mainstream".

And Obama says uh uh, ee ee, but but...Let Me Be Clear--no one can question my patriotism.

America are you asleep?

It's a good answer. But, McCain's answer was in character with him. He was honest, he doesn't know. His wife is the business woman and it's her money. I like that.

That is what happens if Mccain doesn't receive the questions in advance a la Saddleback.

Kaj,

In the internet age, ignorance should not be an excuse and recipients of information are supposed to be able to decipher between what is true and what is false. When facts can be checked on several internet sites.

A Candidate that disseminates falsehood in order to get my votes insults me and insults everything I stand for.
What it means is that he knows that he is blatantly feeding me with falsehood but knows he won’t get caught because I don't have the intelligence to know the difference.

Your statement is an indictment on the literacy rate in the US.

And if we continue down the road of swallowing every word that comes out of the mouth of a Politician hook, line and sinker, then the coming generations of Americans are in trouble.

Carrie, it must be nice to be a millionaire and not have to care about economic and foreign policy, and its impact on your family. I wish I could be as vacuous as you, but I have to worry about supporting kids and paying for my house, so I have to make my decision based on the fact that I can't afford another year like the last eight.

For those of us who support John McCain, it doesn't matter how he responds. Nothing Barack Obama says can change our support for Senator McCain. The more Obama talks, the more he appears on the news, the more the news media tries to promote him, the more money he has to spend, and the more campaign messages I hear, the more sick of him and his rock-star candidacy I get.

Yea right we all can Identify with our wives having 7 houses and us nothing.

The Typical American Family!