Or so I can hope:
The upshot here is that McCain was asked during a press conference where he said everything was “okie-dokie” with the economy, someone asked him how many houses he owned, and he said he couldn’t remember and to “get back” with him on that. Here’s the video:
To be fair, the Obamas are hardly paupers themselves, though I have to assume that they own only one home. It’d be a pretty bad “don’t throw rocks if you live in glass houses” sort of political move if that weren’t the case. And, as I heard clarified on NPR this evening, the McCains really have “only” four homes they use on a regular basis: one in Virginia, two in Arizona, and one in California. The McCain spokesperson said that there were other “investment properties” in the mix.
Still, this whole thing raises a couple of important points.
First, John McCain is rich— like really freakin’ rich. Well, at least his wife is really rich– she inherited one of the largest beer distributor businesses in the country– but that seems like fair territory to me since so much was made of Kerry’s rich wife by George “my family has more money than God and Satan combined” H.W. Bush. Obama has had his own quasi-shady real estate dealings, but as FactCheck.org suggests, there’s really not a there there.
Second, how full of dementia do you have to be to forget and/or not be able to clearly answer the simple question “how many houses do you own?”