Posted by JumpyPants
The moment of the debate, THE moment, is when Obama said, “Here’s your fine, zero.” McCain: “Zero?” Obama: “Zero…”
McCain’s blinking, dumbstruck, carp in the headlights look, in which his jaw ACTUALLY dropped (at which point he became the physical embodiment of a cliche), took 11 seconds (I timed it thanks to TiVO).
ELEVEN SECONDS before he finally could get his brain back on track. ELEVEN SECONDS of McCain realizing he didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. ELEVEN SECONDS of McCain realizing that he knows less than a fourth-grader about math. ELEVEN SECONDS of McCain visualizing his campaign self-destruct. ELEVEN SECONDS of McCain having the awful, dawning, humbling recognition that his plan to metaphorically shiv his powerful old man who was on the Joint Chiefs, and to symbolically kick in the nuts his even more powerful grandad who commanded the Atlantic Fleet during WWII, was going up in smoke.McCain has wanted to be president for one overwhelming reason: to be better than his old man and his grandpa — and by better, of course, I mean more powerful. The only way for a failed, jet-crashing pilot like him to do that, someone who slummed his way to power sideways, through politics, through marrying a rich heiress to fund his campaign, the only way for him to be more powerful is to be Commander in Chief. That’s a bigger, bossier, nuclear-codesier holding gig than either of those bastards. And he’s never going to have the job. And in those ELEVEN SECONDS, he saw that.Instead, the job is going to go to That One.
