blogger interrupted

There was a time, about 3 weeks ago, when it appeared John McCain’s campaign was imploding, in danger of death by a thousand gaffes.  The Phil Gramm “nation of whiners” moment, the daily blunders, the daily embarrassments….any other candidate, in any other time, would have been sunk.  

I’ve since decided that this is the campaign that McCain will run, every day, until November 4th.  The incompetence is simply too pervasive, too predictable, too frequent, to simply be momentary screw ups.  This is McCain’s campaign, period.

But why isn’t John McCain sunk yet?  In a strange way, the Internet driven media cycle, combined with the media’s transparent McCain-worship, has given John McCain a pass.  But at the same time, the new cycle is laying traps for McCain that one day will indeed sink him.  

As surely as it sunk Hillary Clinton.

If you thought Bill Clinton seemed tin-eared in the face of the current Internet driven media cycle, behold John McCain, who by his own admission hasn’t even used a computer until this summer.  While stunning, this admission on his part, and the plainly obvious befuddlement McCain demonstrates on a daily basis, has given McCain a tempting free pass.

What the internet, and social media like the blogosphere, do best, is find and identify authenticity.  I’ve noted before that Barack Obama used this to his advantage against Hillary Clinton, whose authentic identity no one has ever been able to identify, via the internet or otherwise.  With McCain, his authenticity is that he is an old man who really doesn’t understand what’s going on around him.  

This is why McCain’s endless gaffes and fumbles haven’t sunk him…yet.  Average voters recognize that this is who John McCain is.  And therein lies the trap.

At some point, the weight of these endless, constant, but perhaps endearing, “senior moments”, driven into the narrative by the internet, will unite with the very poisonous, non-endearing notion in the electorate that he is just too old.  Too out of touch.  Too disconnected from an increasingly hyperconnected world.   Media McCain worship is itself in-authentic, and once the internet, over time, counters that nonsense with reality, the free pass will be revoked.  Harshly, quickly, and irreversibly.

And at that point, McCain’s campaign will indeed finally sink.

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