John McCain’s Mother’s Day Message: Buy One Corpse, Get One Free

Senator John McCain has launched a new TV spot advertising his new funeral home business. It shows him wheeling out the corpse of his one thousand year old mother to chat with him about his birth during the French and Indian War.

If your reading this Senator McCain (or if any of your campaign staff are tuned in) let me give you some free (and excellent) political advice. If you’re trying not to reinforce the negative stereotype about your age, you’d better not put your white-haired self in front of a camera next your blue-haired mother. Perhaps your intention was to look young next to the woman who so kindly gave birth to you, but I look at this ad and I immediately see two half-dead senior citizens reminiscing about Life Magazine in the crumbling library of a nursing home.

Senator, it might be time that you accepted your age as a disadvantage and stopped trying to remind us that, compared to your mom, you’re as healthy as a horse. Voters overlook things like age if you’ve got a solid message, proven skills and an unimpeachable character. Which you have in spades.

And you’re a war hero. And not just any war hero. One that was continuously tortured for years and as a result, can’t fully use your arms because of the trauma you’ve sustained. If there’s a contrast between your age and Obama’s youth, there’s an even better one between your awesomeness and Obama’s complete inexperience.

Look, if you’re ever going to look young in your ads, this isn’t the way to do it. The only way you can ever achieve that is if you eat nails or shoulder-press a live tiger.

I don’t see that happening. In fact, that scenario is the opposite of what your Mother’s Day commercial is. And that’s my point. If you’re not willing to go to one extreme to pedal your youth, don’t go to the other. Having your mother make speeches introducing you at campaign stops is one thing, but having her appear in commercials seen by millions of voters is quite another. I hope for your sake, your campaign staff has learned their lesson.

And, of course, Happy Mother’s Day.