Op-Ed: McCain In The Shortest Presidential Interview Of All-Time

CNN’s correspondent John King conducted an interview - if you can call it that - with Republican presidential nominee John McCain yesterday. The interview was abruptly cut short when King began to ask McCain for some substance to an answer.

McCain’s strategy was an old and masterful tactic of getting a message out and then leaving it at that. Does anyone remember Mark Penn and his cocaine comments? Hillary Clinton used the same tactic during the Democratic primary season while rolling to late victories in West Virginia and Kentucky. Yesterday the big presidential race topic was Barack Obama’s comments in front of a Missouri crowd Wednesday.

"What they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." – Barack Obama

Obama didn't explain the comment. But it evoked images of past presidents who grace U.S. paper money, such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant, all white men, and all save Grant older than Obama when elected. The McCain campaign jumped on the apparent race aspect. I saw it as actually being an age reference.

"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong." – McCain campaign manager Rick Davis

At least a few members of the mainstream media think McCain was correct in his assessment of the comments. There are others however, who feel McCain has been the race baiter. Obama previously has talked about his physical appearance in speeches, but the McCain camp argues that he crossed the line by accusing the GOP of scare tactics and alluding to his own race in the same breath. In what could be seen as a masterful tactic of his own, and a pre-emptive warning by Obama. If the McCain camp actually ‘goes racial’ Obama’s camp can say ‘See what I mean’. The back-and-forth were the latest salvos in a contest that's grown increasingly negative despite pledges by both McCain and Obama not to run such campaigns. The daily rhetoric has turned nasty as both maneuver for advantage and polls show the race competitive three months before the election. Look for this campaign to become nastier indeed.