Apparently, John McCain is getting a wee bit tired from campaigning. Or at least that's the excuse the NYT provides for him in its recent article about his abundance of gaffes and misstatements. McCain himself:

Mr. McCain did not address whether his gaffes had anything to do with fatigue, but he seemed to suggest that they might have. "If I put in three or four 18-hour, 20-hour days in a row, then I’m not sharp," Mr. McCain said. "It’s just a fact."

Almost as volatile as the "race" issue in this year's election is the issue of age. It is as equally impossible to ignore the reality of McCain's age as it is to ignore Obama's being black. The media and most pundits have tip-toed around this subject for months. I doubt that there is anyone out there who hasn't had a parent or grandparent, aunt or uncle who as they advanced into there seventies began to exhibit signs of diminishing mental ability. It's just a fact of life. It's not a stigma. It's not something you whisper about. It is something you become concerned about that's all.

Yes, we're not supposed to talk about it, but McCain's mental acuity and general health should be questioned more.
McCain's medical record covered 1,173 pages, and was made available for a few hours to journalists, in a guarded room with no possibility of making copies.
Obama's fit on one page.

The McCain campaign and the MSM are ignoring the issue of McCain's health, age and mental faculties, in spite of evidence that McCain is having trouble remembering his own positions and statements - on so many occasions that it should be front and center in the media.

And when McCain met with George H.W. Bush, it wasn't the ex-president who seemed to be the elder.

More>

Short post: Channel surfing during a Countdown commercial last night and came across Bill O’Reilly and his body language expert looking at McCain’s deer-in-the-headlights response last Friday to a question posed at a Panama City media avail.

Was he trying to avoid a tough question?  Was he squirming?  Thinking about the political ramifications of his response.

No, the body language expert replied.  He was just totally lost.  Then Bill O chimes in – "yes, that was definitely a senior moment."

Today is Barack Obama's 47th birthday. He shares the same birthdate as Louis Armstrong, Helen Thomas, Billy Bob Thornton, Roger Clemens, and Percy Shelley.

Much has been made about Obama's youth, and I've joked about how much I love to hear that, being just nine days older than he is. In 1908, an American man could expect to live just 49.5 years. Had they lived a century ago, Barack Obama would likely have been nearing the end of his life and John McCain would've been dead for decades. It's only now, as average life expectancy nears 80, that Obama is considered to be barely middle aged. But as he closes in on the half-century mark, Obama has had plenty of time to gain wisdom and perspective.

Go below the flip to learn why someone born in 1961 is ideally suited to be president ...

Oh no...not another vent diary.

Who do I think I am. Well, no one.

Will the media listen to me, a single user of DK? Especially someone who is in a minority of DK users in my political views?

No. But that's not why I write this.

When I first came here I really did not know what to expect.

But I have learned a lot from each and every one of you.

<More after the break>

McCains many gaffes have finally been getting attention in CBSNEWS and in Politico.com.
Critics Pile On As McCain Gaffes Pile Up: Verbal Blunders Bring New Attention To Sensitive Issue Of His Age by Politico.com and Repeated in CBSNews sums it up nicely.

Do these consistent gaffes reflect poorly on America?

McCain said "Iraq" when he apparently meant "Afghanistan" on Monday, adding to a string of mixed-up word choices that is giving ammunition to the opposition.
Just in the past three weeks, McCain has mixed up Iraq and Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan, and even football’s Packers and Steelers.
Ironically, the errors have been concentrated in what should be his area of expertise - foreign affairs.

My father regarded me intensely. He wanted something, and I just wasn't getting it.

"The record," he said. "It won't work."

We were standing in his driveway. I'd just got out of my car, and he rushed out of the house to greet me and get my help right away. The only problem was, I hadn't a clue as to what he wanted. He had an extensive record collection -- vinyl going back to the 1940s with an emphasis on Ella Fitzgerald and the Dorsey brothers. But there's little or nothing I would be able to help him regarding that.

So, we started the "20 questions" routine. That always left him deeply frustrated.

From the Wash Post:

A significant slice of the electorate has qualms about McCain's age. The presumed Republican nominee will celebrate his 72nd birthday shortly before his party's convention. Polls show the age question isn't going away, despite the Arizona senator's efforts to deflect it with self-deprecating humor, or disprove it by keeping a grueling schedule.

"Sure, people live to be 90, but you are not as sharp," said Virginia Bailey, 73, a retired administrative assistant who lives near Schenectady, N.Y., and is a Republican. "I'm not as sharp as I was ten years ago, and I'm sure (McCain) isn't either _ even though he wouldn't admit it."...

The age issue is "clearly a potential problem" for McCain, said independent pollster Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. "There is a larger issue of whether people will come to see him as old apart from his age," Kohut added. "Will they think of him as having old ideas?"

Since I work for a county organization in a highly Republican area, my most passionate political discussions tend to be with like-minded coworkers. Though I rarely let a chance go by without some comment, I tend to be diplomatic and emphasize the hole we're in, rather than who put us there.

I let people draw their own conclusions.

A friend of mine has been genuinely conflicted over her choices this Presidential campaign season. She liked Clinton, especially since she is our NY State Senator and has done good things for the area.

But Barack Obama... she said, "There's something about him I just can't feel comfortable with."

(It would not be diplomatic at this point to discuss any racial issues. I don't think she is racist, at all. But we're one of those areas where the African American segment is like 1%.) I explained why I liked Obama, and suggested she see what he says on his website, especially listening to his speeches.

But it wasn't what Obama did that let her make up her mind. It's what McCain did.

To the Flipmobile!

I think the dynamic this new poll points to will clinch it for Obama in November:

Poll: McCain's age more of an issue than Obama's race

CNN) — John McCain may be hindered more by his age than Barack Obama will be by his race as the two men vie for the White House, a new USA Today/Gallup poll suggests.

According to the new poll, 23 percent of Americans say McCain's age — he'll turn 72 next month — is likely to make him a less effective president were he to win the White House. That compares to only 8 percent who said Obama's race would make him a less effective president.

Overall, more than 8 in 10 Americans said Obama's race would make no difference in his effectiveness in the White House while 65 percent said the same about McCain's age.

Being 54, I can remember the Reagan years. I can remember having a doddering old fool for our president. The whole country was witness to the beginnings of Reagan's decent into Dementia. Look at Figure #1 in this PDF File. Scary stats. Americans have good reason to worry about McCain's age.

With 19 percent of the public associating John McCain with "old," I thought it was important to write a serious, substantive diary about some little known facts regarding the age of the 71 year old Republican Presumptive Nominee. ;)

You can't be too Black, to be President.
You can't be too White, to be President.

Gender is not a Presidential qualification.

You can't be too female, to be President.
You can't be too male, to be President.

It seems that the McCain campaign is getting a bit cantankerous.  They don’t like anyone saying that John McCain is old.  And they don’t like anyone implying he’s old.  In fact, they don’t like it if they think that someone might be hinting that he’s old:

As some Republicans see it, Democrats are deliberately talking in code about the presumptive 71-year-old GOP nominee as part of an attempt to highlight his age.

"It is code; there is no question it is," [said] Ed Rollins.

First, let’s pause for a moment and ponder the hypocrisy of Republicans whining about using code words to create doubt or fear for political gain.  And now that you’re done laughing, who is the McCain campaign trying to kid?  John McCain has no problem mentioning his age in a self-deprecating, ah shucks, kind of way when he thinks it’s to his advantage, but he’s going to be outraged that people are talking "in code" about his age?   Because he certainly doesn’t seem to have a problem using age as an issue

"I admire and respect Senator Obama," Mr. McCain said, his voice full of sarcasm. "For a young man with very little experience, he’s done very well."

He went on: "For his very, very great lack of experience and knowledge of the issues, he’s been very successful. So don’t get me wrong, I admire and respect Senator Obama, but he does not have the knowledge background or judgment to lead this nation in these difficult and challenging times and I do, and I can keep this nation prosperous and secure."

Or is it okay if you simply skip the code?  And then there’s the pseudo-outrage, such as when McCain was "obviously disappointed" that John Kerry would insult his age by calling him "confused" about Sunnis and Shiites.  Given that McCain has said on three separate occasions that Iran is training Sunnis to fight in Iraq, McCain should be grateful that Kerry went with confused rather than calling him either stupid or a liar. Calling him confused was a kindness, not a slur.

While some might want to make McCain's age and less than stellar health an issue, the real problem is that his ideas are old. From running a campaign that can’t master the google, to vowing to continue the failed policies of the last eight years, John McCain is living in the past and that fact is a valid campaign issue.  And Democrats can’t fall into the trap of censoring their language because the McCain campaign complains about supposed code words. Saying that McCain has lost his bearings, lost his mind, or that he can't remember what he said last week isn't a slur against his age, it's reality.    

All this talk about saying McCain is confused and out of touch are they code words for he is getting old? Is he too old? Is it fair to use his age against him?
Why not, he is 72 years old, and at 72 years old, he is very tied to another generation, and the ways of that generation. I have known 72 years old who are young at heart, and if you talked to them on the telephone or corresponded with them, without actually physically seeing them, you wouldn't guess they were 72 years old. John McCain is not one of those people.

There they go again...

The political pundits are zeroing in on specific words of Democrats and accusing them (they are probably using John McCain's talking points memo) of pointing out John McCain's 'age' by using them.

Tonight Chris Matthews of Hardball jumped on the word CONFUSED.  Many Obama supporters used the word to describe McCain after his comment about it "not being important" whether troops come home or not.

is a June 11, 2008 article on Slate by Christopher Beam. Go read it and put it out to your friends via email. Why, because it states a very important and obvious and true set of facts about the aging brain. [I know, I have one of my own!]

http://www.slate.com/...

The recent response of the Obama campaign to John McCain's recent comments on Iraq--that he is "confused," "oblivious," and "losing his bearings" among other things--is being discussed as a veiled attack on his age. But this thinking is backwards, as I will explain.

Age is a category that is sensitive to discrimination based on generalizations (generally true or not) about people categorized by that factor, just as race and sex often is. Any true generalization, of course, may not apply to all of those in the particular class, and it is a grave mistake to ascribe any of the generalizations to any particular person in the class without evidence that it applies.

(continued after the jump)