McCain and His Houses

A lot has been made of John McCain's inability to remember how many houses he and his wife own. Some have said it shows he is an elitist. Others have said it proves he is senile. Most agree it proves one or the other. (Favorite)

Let me be the first to argue it is both.

He is clearly an elitist if he doesn't know how many houses he has, come on. Even putting him in the class of people who have two homes is at least upper middle class. It's when you get above that level that you would want to hide it by pretending you can't recall how many you have total. McCain is not doing that. He can't remember because he and his wife keep buying homes they don't need. Seriously. Newsweek said seven residences earlier, Politico confirmed eight today. Apparently they have two condos in the same building. I'm not even going to try to pretend I know what rich people think and thus can fathom a guess as to why you'd want two condos in a single building.

Second, even an elitist would probably know how many houses he or she had because they were selected for a reason. They needed one home near to DC, one in Arizona, a cabin for vacation, etc. For most of us, one is probably the best we can hope for, near work, but... McCain couldn't remember, so he guessed four. I say "guess" because I don't think he could remember. Maybe he went back to a time when they did have four. One thing that happens when dementia starts to set in is the loss of short term memory (c.f. McCain referring to "Czechoslovakia"). One remembers things from 15 years ago in dramatic detail, but not what happened five minutes prior to the present. It now turns out four is half of the real total. There may be more to come. It's a senior moment. It shows he isn't dealing with the problems of average Americans. Let's call it what it is: both elitism and dementia.