So Allen and Martin had a laugh-in with John McCain yesterday and wrote up this zinger:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.
"I think - I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told us in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where - I'll have them get to you."
Hoy-oh! That's a hoot. The article points out that he owns at least four houses, plus a few condos here and there, for a total of at least seven properties. During a housing crisis where hundreds of thousands of families are facing foreclosure, here is a president who can empathize with their situation. It just shows how far out from the average American McCain really is. Buying a house is one of the largest single expenditures in a person's life --even, I'd imagine, for members of McCain's $3 million middle-class -- a mortgage is a decades long obligation, and when it's finally paid off, people celebrate. Unless you have a $100 million fortune.
The Obama campaign is no doubt eyeing this information as fodder for a potential attack ad, or at least a disarming quip for their candidate. But it reminds me of this graph Ezra made the other day, a nice comparative model demonstrating the relationship between actually being rich and what you think the definition of rich is. But there's also an interesting relationship between not being rich and supporting policies that benefit the wealthy -- less-well off Americans may see themselves as strivers, as people who can get there some day; it can be hard to admit that you're not going to end up with millions of dollars. Let's hope the economic situation we're in right now has made everything too serious for that kind of aspirational voting.
UPDATE: It's on now.
--Tim Fernholz
