A political conversation

Overheard at work:

[A sentence or two I missed, except for the word campaign.]
A: I'm so glad it's almost done and it's going to be ok.
B: Oh I know, it's such a relief.
A: I can't believe how bad McCain has been.
B: Yeah I used to think he had a brain but now...
A: Yeah he just doesn't have a brain.
B: [trying to be fair] Well, he hasn't been using his brain.
I: [turn headphones way up]

A and B are both quite nice. A is a MoveOn/AirAmerica fan but from having been forced to hear her frequently I don't think she actually knows what she's listening to. Very much a politics-as-identity-and-lifestyle sort of person. B is very sweet and it's a credit to her commonsense that she spends, as far as I can tell, no time thinking about politics except when it shows up in funny videos. Or in the case of Saturday Night Live, "funny" videos. It's just barely conceivable that B would have voted for McCain, if the press coverage of him had remained as adulatory as it was in 2000 or 2004.

McCain will almost certainly never be president, but by betraying his party and his own former principles for cheap popularity with journalists, he convinced two people that he had a brain at one point but then later lost it or did not use it. That is radiant political genius even a thistle has to love.