McCain Loses Letterman (Not to Mention, Gen. Colin Powell…)

Ed Sills, director of communications for the Texas AFL-CIO, follows up on Sen. John McCain’s appearance on the CBS show, “Late Night with David Letterman,” last Thursday, in which the comedian grilled and skewered McCain over his flimsy attacks on Barack Obama.

When the history of the 2008 presidential election is written, at least a long footnote if not more will be required to examine the effect of TV comedy on shaping perceptions. In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson knew the Vietnam War was a lost cause when he “lost” Walter Cronkite.

Well, John McCain has managed to “lose” another CBS icon, David Letterman, even before the election. Last Thursday night, Letterman absolutely fried McCain on his TV show before millions of viewers. It had been clear that Letterman was angry when he used a live feed from the CBS newsroom to demonstrate on his show that when McCain told him he had to return to Washington to help with the Wall Street bailout, he actually was heading across the street to do an interview with Katie Couric at the same time. 

This produced outstanding comedic mileage for weeks, so when McCain returned to “Late Night,” one might have expected a thawing of the relationship. Right out of the box, McCain admitted on national television, “I screwed up.”  

But then something strange and unexpected happened. With serious questions, Letterman grilled McCain on why he and Gov. Sarah Palin had accused Sen. Barack Obama of having links to terrorists based on the flimsy evidence of a passing association with Bill Ayers. Letterman became so fed up with the answers that he then asked McCain about his long (and closer) association with Watergate crook G. Gordon Liddy. And in relatively gentle fashion, he made it clear that he thought the pick of Palin for the vice presidential slot didn’t meet the basic standard that she is capable of taking over the Oval Office in an emergency.  

Because the frame was a show biz one, McCain had little choice but to take his licks. At one point during the discussion of Ayers, when Letterman rebuked him for linking Obama to “terrorists,” McCain tried to wriggle out by noting that “millions of words” are spoken in a campaign—the clear implication being that you can’t take this kind of crap seriously. 

Political debates rarely turn a candidate into a steaming pile of goo, but the Letterman interview last night came as close as one will ever see. 

In fact, it was so bad, that the right-wing talk machine was going after Letterman the morning after. 

I’ve been a fan of Letterman for a long time, but I never considered him overtly political until fairly recently. Some might remember the long, serious monologue he delivered from his desk when his program returned weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, as emotional a response as one could find and one that included heartfelt praise for the leadership of then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani. 

As a representative of middle America, Letterman’s politics always seemed middle-of-the-road—until last year’s TV writers’ strike, when he bent over backward to give the union a real forum on his unscripted shows and made it clear that he was on the union’s side. That move, along with other performers’ endorsements of the union position, went a long way toward resolving the strike favorably.  

This year, he has been fond of saying that “The road to the White House goes through here,” and woe to the candidate who has been unable to handle himself in the anything-goes atmosphere of late-night comedy. 

Letterman is just a piece of the overall picture. Tina Fey’s devastating impression of  Palin has single-handedly jacked up the ratings of “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) to levels not seen in many years. Palin herself appeared on SNL this weekend.

Political monologues on other late-night shows have included equal-opportunity barbs, but somehow the barbs against McCain seem to have penetrated. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have remained satirically sharp on their late-night shows.  

Comedy does in moments what political speeches can’t do in hours. In 1980, I had my first inkling that Ronald Reagan was actually going to become president during a skit on “Saturday Night Live,” in which a group of hippies were singing a version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” that went, “The answer, my friend, is Ronald Reagan….” It was supposed to mock Reagan’s ability to attract younger voters, but it was, sadly, an actual job of reporting.

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