John McCain: A Retrospective

With the eminent demise of John McCain's presidential bid looming punctuated by today's loss of McCain's top two aids, we see it fit to do a retrospective of McCain's foibles. From frontrunner to future NASCAR poster child (a la Bob Dole for Viagra), let's take one last look at John McCain.

As a new blog, we first talked about McCain on April 10, 2007 when he went rug shopping in Baghdad. An odd move, but we let it slide.

Next, we talked about McCain on April 17, 2007. He caught our attention for wavering on his initial support for increased troops in Iraq. At least retrospectively, this was probably a popular move.

And then the next day, things turned weird. An all new McCain emerged. He released a YouTube Video parodying Ocean's 13. It was meant to be young and hip, a VERY far cry from the McCain we've always been able to set a watch by. That was the first time I mentioned that such a tactic coming from McCain came across as dishonest and off putting.

And the very next day, the going got even weirder. The famous "Bomb Iran" video popped up on YouTube. That was a hell of a sound bite. By that weekend, MoveOn.org had already cut it into an anti-Republican advertisement.

Then things turned really bad for McCain. As you can see to the right, he dropped 4 points in the polls, which doesn't mean much on its own other than that was his biggest weekly drop to date. Oh. And in the middle of that, he appeared on The Daily Show and joked about putting an IED under Jon Stewart's desk and kicking a dog. The next day, April 25, 2007, was when I wrote the article predicting his political demise.

On April 25th, he was confronted on ABC's Good Morning America about the flack he'd been taking on YouTube, to which he defended his use of "humor." And we, of course, reiterated that he's not funny and that schtick would kill his campaign.

Then came an underwhelming YouTube YouChoose Spotlight for McCain. It was quickly followed by Dennis Kucinich managing to surpass McCain in Channel subscriptions.

Going into the May 3rd Republican Debate, McCain trailed Giuliani by 16 points. By this time, we were seeing less and less of McCain.

Oh June 20th, we talked about McCain's NASCAR video, which is really only funny and worth mentioning because I'm from Los Angeles and find NASCAR to be, well, funny.

On June 25th, McCain unleashed another little zinger. When he was questioned about dropping out of the race, he said that whoever thought that was "smoking something." Honestly, not a big deal at all, but these things are kinda cumulative.

And then, on July 2nd, word of McCain staff cuts and poor fundraising numbers hit the AP. And as they say, the rest was history.