Don't jump all over me, but for a second I felt so sorry for him. Look at John McCain's eyes in the moment he realizes that one more fucking thing has gone wrong in his campaign -- Joe really isn't here after all. It's been every day and it's been several times a day, and for a long time.
Things keep going wrong and he keeps trying to put he best face on it. They sure don't seem to be going wrong for Obama. But for some reason, it's Palin, it's the interview, it's the press, its the $150,000.00 clothing story, it's that horrible psycho in Pennsylvania screaming that a black man beat her up. It never lets up.
And now, for the second time, he's announcing a celebrity-type who isn't here. It isn't fair.
It's when the reality sets in that it's this one more thing, maybe at 0:25-0:28 in the video, that you can see it in his eyes, a look that makes it seem that for a second his whole body is sagging under the weight of one more screw-up.
Maybe I'm overly sentimental. I know essentially all of this is his fault, but it's so relentless, this stretch of bad karma.
So it makes me think of a story. A man, John, a bit past his presidential prime, but running for a job that he was cheated out of at his prime eight years ago. He hires the chief of the camp that cheated him, maybe to help cheat the opponents, maybe to make sure he gets the best cheater so he's not the one cheated this time.
We'll call this chief of the cheating camp Steve. So he hires Steve to help him capture the glory that got away from him, before it's gone forever.
But almost immediately things start going wrong. John almost doesn't get the nomination, which should be his almost for the asking, and even when he does, it's just one thing and another and another.
The screw-ups accumulate like a pyramid of skulls. They not only don't stop, they seem to get worse and worse. Steve plans an attack that oddly backfires. With Steve's help John names a Vice President who's not only unqualified, the very act of naming her calls into question John's own qualification.
The screw-ups get more frequent. Featured figures are announced but are mysteriously absent from campaign events.
In the end John is buried under a mile-deep avalanche of misfortune. And the more often John goes for help to Steve, the worse things seem to get.
In the end, months after the disaster is tallied up, John is sitting alone on his porch, and as the truth begins to dawn, he asks himself the same question over and over; "What did I ever do to him?" It is a question that will haunt him for the rest of his days.