Daily Show: McCain's speech was 'going so well until his mouth ruined it'
In the wake of Tuesday's concluding primaries, the Daily Show's Jon Stewart focused on the three remaining candidates' speeches.
Stewart first jabbed Hillary Clinton for her self-centered non-concession speech. "Senator, last night wasn't really about you," Stewart admonished, offering a collage of Clinton's repeated use of "I want," "I hope," "I promise," and "I am so proud."
"Those pundits never gave you a chance!" ranted Stewart. He then pulled up clips from 2006 and 2007 of a string of media figures calling Clinton's nomination "almost inevitable," "locked up," and "in the bag." Joe Scarborough, in particular, stated on December 20, 2006, "She will crush Barack Obama. Barack, just sit it out. It's going to be ugly, I promise you. You heard it here first."
Stewart next turned to the two presumptive nominees, starting with a clip of Obama's proclamation that "this was the moment, this was the time, when we came together to remake this great nation."
"The passion! The excitement!," exclaimed Stewart. "If I were his Republican opponent, I would make sure that I made no speeches this very same night that could be easily and disadvantageously juxtaposed with said passionate speech. Oh. Shit."
"John McCain decided to make his case before 1/30 the number of people as Obama in a room ten times as green," Stewart explained, but he added that rather than going by appearances, "Let's judge the passion."
"He doesn't trust us to make decisions for ourselves and wants the government to make them for us," McCain whined like a restive teenager, grinning rigidly as the audience booed on cue. "That's not change we can believe in," McCain said. He later repeated the same phrase over and over, always with the same stiff grin, often prefacing it with a strange little giggle.
"It was going so well until his mouth ruined it for his face," Stewart commented sadly.
"So his theme is to coopt Obama's phrase, 'Change we can believe in,'" noted Stewart. "I think we know where the big rhetorical finish is going."
"It has moved America forward," said McCain. "And that, my friends, is the kind of change ..."
"You can believe in," suggested Stewart.
"... the kind of change we need right now," finished McCain.
"What the hell was that?" asked a stunned-looking Stewart.
Even the commentators at Fox News called McCain's speech "kind of painful" and Obama's "exciting and visionary," leading Stewart to conclude, "This truly was a historical night."
This video is from Comedy Central's The Daily Show, broadcast June 4, 2008.
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