30-Minute McCain

This started out as a different post. It was to be entitled "Second-Worst Hour of TV Ever." My thinking was that John McCain's appearance on Rachael Ray's talk show tomorrow was second only to Retch having Sarah Palin on. I somewhat loathe Rachael Ray, and can imagine few tortures worse than being in that audience on that imaginary day.

But the more I imagined the scheduled show, the more I softened toward McCain. He looked so tiny beside Obama at the World Trade Center site this morning. No one can take away the fact that the video of him as a thirtysomething P.O.W. is touching.

I do not want this man to be president of my country. But at times he can seem to be, on his own, redeeming. I feel this way when I look directly as President Bush; the emptiness, the lack of anything sharp behind his eyes lend a sort of innocence when you take him out of context.

Is it possible that in the past few weeks, McCain has stumbled upon a benefit to himself by positioning himself alongside these two shrew-like women, who, like Joe Biden recently said, can be viewed as "a step backward for women?" Watching a fading, old soldier sit through an hour with Retch is undoubtedly more tolerable than having to watch, and worse, listen to, her and Palin try to out-attention-grab one another. (As a side note, both women's Wikipedia pages have had the editing function disabled for the month due to vandalism, generally a sign of much contempt toward their subjects. Neither Barack Obama's nor John McCain's are currently locked.)

I still will not watch the show due to my aversion to the host. But with Retch's large audience of middle-America women, will it be worrisome if McCain comes off as sweet? Or will he simply seem like a red-state grandfather no longer as powerful as he once was?