McCain Gaffe, Obama Advantage

22 August 2008 |permalink | email article

When Politico.com asked John McCain in an interview how many houses he and his wealthy wife own the candidate was caught off guard. “I think--I’ll have my staff get to you. “It’s condominiums where –I’ll have them get to you.”

In a campaign where Barack Obama has struggled so far on the economy to convince voters that he shares their hopes and worries McCain’s gaffe was huge. Suddenly the perception may be he, not Obama, is out of touch with people and millions struggling to keep up with their mortgage payments.

Obama now has a platform from which to hammer the Arizona senator on his role in the Keating Five ethics scandal in 1989 while identifying himself as a champion of the middle class on pocket book issues.

Repeatedly accused by McCain of being an elitist, Obama told a crowd in Virginia yesterday: “I guess if you think that being rich means that you’ve got to make $5 million and if you don’t know how many houses you have, then it’s not surprising that you may think the economy is fundamentally sound.”

The Obama campaign produced an ad noting that McCain actually owns seven homes worth $13 million as an image of the White House is shown, and a narrator intones: “Here’s one house America can’t afford to let John McCain move into.” (Politico later reported eight, all in the name of his wife, children, trusts and companies.)

A McCain flack responded in kind by questioning whether a candidate who bought a million-dollar mansion with the help of convicted real estate felon Tony Rezko really wants to get into a debate about houses.

The spokesman, in full damage control, tried to play a trump card by invoking rather clumsily a non sequitur about his POW experience in Vietnam: “This is guy who lived in one house for five and a half years – in prison”

This is the spark of an economic debate, certain to play out to Nov. 4, with populist overtones – the kind that can make or break a presidential campaign. Voters ultimately nixed both wind-surfing John Kerry and Bush 41 who didn’t know how to use a grocery scanner as not one of them.

The comedian Robert Klein, on Keith Olbermann last night, summed up McCain’s house gaffe: “He had a geezer moment.”

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