Harvard's Election 2008 Blog

It's about to be taken off Hulu for some unsuspicious reason (here's the link anyway, in case they magically put it back up) but did anybody catch McCain on Conan recently?

I like the guy, but it sounded like he was telling grandpa's old war stories.

O'Brien asked an interesting question with regards to a recent New York Times article that argues that this campaign season, Obama has not done anything that would distinguish him comically (no Lewinsky scandal) but that:

"Comedy has been no easier for the phalanx of late-night television hosts who depend on skewering political leaders for a healthy quotient of their nightly monologues. Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and others have delivered a nightly stream of jokes about the Republican running for president - each one a variant on the same theme: John McCain is old."

 

O'Brien asked McCain if he could think of a better way to have the late night comics joke about him, besides the old jokes.  McCain came up with nothin'.  Kudos to him for at least being able to roll with the punches and maximize the "oldness thing."

But, as this CNN article suggests, the GOP has lost its youth appeal and "many young conservatives are worried that Sen. John McCain is not appealing to their generation:"

At a town hall meeting in Ohio this month, a student told McCain that Republicans were a dying breed on his campus.

[...]

Many young Republicans said Sen. Barack Obama, the 46-year-old junior senator from Illinois, is inspiring voters their age, but McCain, the 71-year-old Arizona senator who has been in office since the early '80s, is not.

Eric Perlmutter, a Republican and student at the at the University of Southern California, said the roaring enthusiasm that follows Obama is missing among conservatives his age.

[...]

Additionally, Perlmutter pointed out that the images used in McCain's campaign -- such as a message about small businesses showing a barber shop with a traditional red and blue pole -- hardly connect to the younger generation.

[...]

The McCain campaign said it plans to increase the senator's presence on sites such as Facebook and MySpace in addition to the candidate making appearance on shows that appeal to younger viewers, such as "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and the "Late Show with David Letterman."

I've been interested in the imagery used in each of the campaigns, but I suspect that McCain's appearance on these TV shows (except Leno) would do him more of a disservice than a service.  As much as I like McCain, and as much as he seems like a nice guy, I don't think that getting to know McCain well get him to connect with young people.  Find somebody else--maybe a Bobby Jindal--to do that for you.