The McCain of the Week


By GAIL COLLINS
Published: September 17, 2008
VIENNA, Ohio


"The people of Ohio are the most productive in the world!" yelled John McCain at a rally outside of Youngstown on Tuesday. Present company perhaps excluded, since the crowd was made up entirely of people who were at liberty in the middle of a workday.

Folks were wildly enthusiastic as the event began. That was partly because Sarah Palin was also on the bill. (With Todd!) And when McCain took the center stage, they were itching to cheer the war hero and boo all references to pork-barrel spenders.

Nobody had warned them that he had just morphed into a new persona — a raging populist demanding more regulation of the nation's financial system. And since McCain's willingness to make speeches that have nothing to do with his actual beliefs is not matched by an ability to give them, he wound up sounding like Bob Dole impersonating Huey Long.

Really, if McCain is going to keep changing into new people, the campaign should send out notices. (Come to a rally for the next president of the United States. Today he's a vegetarian!)

"We're going to put an end to the abuses on Wall Street — enough is enough!" this new incarnation yelled, complaining angrily about greed and overpaid C.E.O.'s. Slowly, people begin to peel out of the crowd and drift away. Even in these troubled times, there are apparently a number of Republicans who think highly of corporate executives and captains of high finance.

The whole transformation was fascinating in a cheap-thrills kind of way. It's not every day, outside of "Incredible Hulk" movies, that you see somebody make this kind of turnaround in the scope of a few hours.
... (NYT Columnist Gail Collins. More here