Will HD kill McCain's candidacy? The technology he championed may sink him!

It's Nixon's sweaty upper lip and five o'clock shadow all over again...

http://www.slate.com/id/2191704/

Then, this past weekend, I watched Saturday Night Live with my kids. McCain appeared in close-up in a mildly amusing skit whose purpose (at least from McCain's perspective) was to remove the age issue from voters' minds by turning it into a joke. It worked for Ronald Reagan in 1984; why shouldn't it work for McCain in 2008? With me, though, it had the exact opposite effect. As someone who'd pooh-poohed the age issue, I found myself gasping at McCain's mug as transmitted in glorious HDTV. Wrinkles, blotches, liver spots, scarry tissue—none of these were hidden by McCain's makeup. As McCain cracked wise ("What do we want in our next president? Certainly someone who is very, very, very old."), I found myself thinking, Jeez, he doesn't look like a guy who'll turn 72 this August. He looks like a guy who'll turn 82. (Note to reader: The link I provide to the SNL skit won't give you any sense of what I'm talking about, because the clip isn't high-definition.)

For all I know, McCain is in fine physical condition. If he appears older than his chronological age, that probably has something to do with the torture he endured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam; nine years ago the Arizona Republic reported that he continued to experience "orthopedic limitations" related to his imprisonment, including pain in his shoulders and right knee. But TV is unfair, as Richard Nixon learned when his perspiration and five o'clock shadow helped give John F. Kennedy the edge in the first-ever televised presidential debates. Had HDTV been available eight years later, I'm not sure Nixon could have won the Republican nomination, let alone the presidency.

I'm not the only person who's noticed HDTV's cruel effect on McCain's puss. Atlantic blogger Matthew Yglesias speculated on March 2 that "more pixels-per-inch isn't going to serve McCain's cause very well." On April 11, Switched.com observed that while HDTV brought out Hillary Clinton's wrinkles and McCain's melanoma scars, all it did to Barack Obama was accentuate the veins on his forehead. About a week later, Politico's Michael Calderone had more or less the same thought while watching McCain in high-def on This Week With George Stephanopoulos. (Memo to the McCain campaign: CBS's Face the Nation and NBC's Meet the Press won't upgrade to high-def this year, and therefore might be safer venues through November.) Gelf magazine noted the phenomenon a year before.* Most of these sources cited Phillip Swann, president of TVPredictions.com, who in 2006 took the trouble to rate five leading Republican and five leading Democratic contenders for president according to how they looked on HDTV. In retrospect, Swann's ratings indicate that at least during the primaries, looking good on HDTV was not a major factor. John Edwards got four smiley faces to Hillary Clinton's two; Obama, who had yet to emerge as a serious candidate, wasn't on the list at all. On the Republican side, the surprise winner was Rudy Giuliani, with three smiley faces to McCain's one. But a lot of the debates weren't available on HDTV, and even when they were, a lot of people weren't paying attention. That isn't true anymore.

I imagine you would see his age more at 1080i or p.

candidate...Obama will kick McCains ass in any debate. McCain = Nixon...what I expect to see is McCain losing his temper when he is backed into a corner.
I also expect McCain to lose it in general as Obama turns up the heat....

Ronald Reagan was a roving ambassador for the mortuary sciences well before he was President.

Americans have shown that they will accept an undead President as long as credible assurances are given that his need to devour brains will not influence him on policy questions concerning the public health, disaster relief, or in his preferring military conflict over diplomacy. As to whether Reagan always honored those assurances-Democrats and Republicans will disagree about that one 'til the Final Zombie Resurrection.

has none.

:rofl:

his time in 'nam, nor his bouts with cancer. God bless him that he survived so far. I will say that he's going to have a very difficult time appearing on the same stage beside a 46 yo and still looking like a viable candidate.

I know one of McNuts arguments FOR his age not being a problem is that his mother being a very vibrant 92, but she didn't suffer all the things he did. They take a BIG toll on any human.

I will NOT battle him on his physical problems, but on his insane Bushlike policies!

Fortunately for us, our candidate is brilliant AND telegenic.