There was an interesting moment during McCain's interview with Meredith Vieira earlier today. At about one minute or so into the clip (below) she interrupts McCain, who had been filibustering his way through an attack on Barack Obama. Her question was about Petraeus' comments that Afghanistan was a growing threat relative to Iraq.
McCain would have been within his rights to tell Vieira to give him a chance to finish, but instead of acknowledging her interruption, he just kept on talking as if she didn't exist. After a couple of seconds, she interrupted him again. At that point, McCain continued to filibuster, but his raised his voice and sharpened his pitch. Finally, when he finished, he invited her question about Petraeus with a snappy tone.
Give a listen to the exchange -- it starts at about 1:05 into the clip,
Unfortunately, the whole thing was off camera -- I'd have loved to have seen McCain's face as this was going on, because he seemed very close to completely blowing his top.
The same thing happened again later in the interview, at about 5:26, with McCain continuing to filibuster and refusing to acknowledge Vieira, but that time he kept his voice under control. However, the question clearly threw him off as he quickly lost his train of thought.
The strange thing here is that I actually think Vieira was being a bit rude, but McCain's inability to simply call her out on it made him look like someone incapable of handling a basic human interaction. Very weird.
Yesterday, debrazza predicted an imminent McCain explosion, which I thought was a pretty good call. Unfortunately, McCain's little boil-over today might have let off just enough steam to allow him to simmer for a bit longer. So maybe it won't happen this week. But if he has another week like this one, or this week continues to get worse, it's coming. It's definitely coming.
© Jed Lewison