McCain Returns to the Daily Show
by Ryan Sager
Tue, 24 Apr 2007 at 11:57 PM
updated Wed, 25 Apr 2007 at 12:33 AM
"The Daily Show" is a fairly reliable barometer of center-left political opinion. And, so, I've always taken John McCain's appearances on the show (tonight marked his ninth) as an excellent way to gauge his standing with an important part of the electorate. That part of the electorate also happens to encompass much of the media.
So, how did Mr. McCain fare in his visit to Jon Stewart's show?
Let's just say things are looking pretty rocky...
Back in the spring of 2006, Mr. McCain took a pounding on the Daily Show, just ahead of his visit to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. After any number of happy visits to the show — Mr. Stewart clearly likes and admires the senator — things turned ice-cold as Mr. McCain's began his descent into what Mr. Stewart termed "crazy base world."
Tonight's visit was more friendly in tone ... but the pounding was just as harsh, if not harsher, over Iraq.
The entire segment was about Iraq. And Mr. Stewart seemed quite determined not to let Mr. McCain get away from the issue even for a second. To Mr. McCain's credit, he didn't try to duck any of the questions, and he's made a full-on embrace of the mission in Iraq the central organizing principle of his campaign — come hell or high water.
"What do you want to start with, the Bomb Iran song, or the walk through the market in Baghdad?" Mr. Stewart started out. (Mr. McCain chose the market. "Are they safe? No. Are they safer, yes.")
Mr. McCain also continued with his strategy of embracing the war while blaming the Bush administration for screwing it up. "Nobody complained more than me," Mr. McCain said about mismanagement of war. I'm not sure I-complained-a-lot is a great line of attack. But it may be the only one open to him.
At one point, Mr. Stewart scoffed at the surge, saying 10,000 troops would do nothing to quell Baghdad — try 350,000 he said — and arguing that it was a disservice to our men and women in uniform to leave them in Iraq with a strategy doomed to failure.
Mr. McCain's response here was pitifully weak: "I don't know that that strategy will succeed, but we do have a new strategy."
Again, there's not much else he can say. But it sounds pretty hopeless. And it certainly doesn't inspire much confidence that Mr. McCain's the man who can win the war.
"You know I love you. And I respect your service," Mr. Stewart said toward the end of the interview, after much grilling. He may at some level, but the love affair Mr. McCain once had with the media is over. Gone and dead. Dead and gone.
The most telling parts of the Daily Show interview were perhaps those that were virtually untranscribable — the two men spent maybe half the interview talking over each other. There's a metaphor in there somewhere.
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