Johnny, We Hardly Know Ye

By Eugene Robinson
Washington Post
Friday, August 22, 2008

There's a candidate in this presidential race who remains a mystery -- hazy, undefined, so full of contradictions that voters may see electing him as an enormous risk. I'm referring to the cipher known as John McCain.

In fact, there are some basic things about McCain that apparently even McCain doesn't know. Asked Wednesday by reporters from Politico how many houses he and his wealthy wife, Cindy, own, McCain responded, "I think -- I'll have my staff get to you." The correct answer seems to be in the neighborhood of seven, but who's counting?

I don't begrudge McCain his multiple residences or his $520 Ferragamo shoes. I understand that he was just being flippant and unresponsive when he said at the Saddleback forum last weekend that being rich meant having an income of at least $5 million a year. But it's a stretch, to say the least, for McCain to portray himself as a Regular Joe while painting Barack Obama as some kind of jet-set celebrity.

It's understandable that McCain would want to fuzz this aspect of his biography; at a moment of great economic dislocation and anxiety, people might question your ability to feel their pain if they know that your net worth may be somewhere north of $100 million. Much less comprehensible, and much more troubling, is McCain's habit of "Straight Talking" himself into the wilderness.

When it was pointed out that McCain's pronouncements on the economy often do not conform to his official positions, the candidate's chief economic adviser indicated that we should pay attention to the authorized version -- despite the fact that McCain "has certainly I'm sure said things in town halls" that might deviate.

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