McCain an Embarrassment on Morning TV

Did you catch John McCain on morning TV this morning? My wife and I caught him on the Today Show, and he certainly has a different style than most guests. He tries desperately not to be interrupted, because it is obvious that his canned speech has been rehearsed over and over, and if he allows himself to be interrupted, he looks like he must start over at the beginning.

His attacks on Barack Obama, though, don’t seem to upset me as much as, say, a Sean Hannity or a Newt Gingrich, and I believe that is because he lacks a great amount of credibility when he speaks. He appears to be fighting for his life – in politics, at least – and he repeats his prepared text without a lot of conviction and emotionality, which are elements that must be present to be taken seriously by the audience, in this case Meredith Vieira and the American people.

Ms. Vieira tried several times to interrupt McCain’s long-winded narratives, ultimately being forced to wait once until he had completely exhausted what he wanted to say, and then another time just choosing to speak over him because he obviously wasn’t fielding questions and apparently refused to stop to listen to any. In other words, he was going to get out what he came to say, and would not stop talking until he got out his entire speech.

I am really waiting for someone on a major forum – and there is no bigger audience than the Today Show – to truly challenge McCain on his major charges and attacks on Barack Obama. Words and accusations fly by fast, but my wife and I thought two if not more of McCain’s criticisms of Barack were completely false, and several more were most likely either misrepresentations or unfair characterizations of Obama’s actual words and actions in the past couple of months.

I am also waiting impatiently for someone to ask McCain what happened to his commitment to run an attack-free campaign. I am awaiting this morning’s interview on YouTube, but I feel like McCain mentioned Obama’s name over a dozen times in a critical, attack-oriented and negative framework that left no doubt that his main mission is to make certain that the listener comes away with the feeling that Obama is a naïve, inexperienced and inadequate candidate of anything, much less president of the United States.

Once Barack sets foot back on US soil and clearly and in a very detailed way explains what he learned, how he sees the next six months playing out and how his impressions of meeting with leaders and soldiers shape what he’ll do when he takes office in January, I believe it is time for Barack to begin defining John McCain for what he is and how he has conducted his campaign. He must once and for all expose McCain as the emperor with no clothes, someone who seems to get away with very little substance and a whole lot of hubris and bravado that in the end amounts to very little that will help the American people.

I completely trust the Obama campaign to know what to do, and I feel quite certain that they’re thinking well beyond what I have and further down the road than I do, so I will sit back and enjoy watching things as they unfold. I am hopeful that one result of this overseas trip is that Barack gets a sizable and meaningful bump in the polls and that McCain is forced to retreat and back away from his constant criticisms and negative attacks as his words are more thoroughly vetted and his weak candidacy is examined and brought out into the mainstream.