Waving the bloody shirt

So some enterprising reporter had the temerity to ask John McCain just how many homes he had (consensus is seven give or take). I think is a legitimate question given that his campaign has gone to great lengths to portray Obama as an out of touch elitist. McCain’s response did not just undercut that attack on Obama; it reduced it to a smoldering pile of patrician bullshit.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you."

Seriously dude, “I’ll have my staff get to you”? That is Leona Helmsley territory. I am not sure how many Americans have trouble keeping a tally of their lodgings but I am sure that their staffs are all on top of that as well. As I understand it, staffs are good for that sort of thing.

And as bad as that exchange was, and it was really, really awful, the McCain campaign just made it worse. Via TPM, I saw this:

The McCain campaign is road-testing a new argument in responding to Obama's criticism of his number-of-houses gaffe, an approach the McCain camp has never tried before: The houses gaffe doesn't matter because ... he was a POW!

"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post.

For those of you who haven't kept track, the McCain campaign just recently cited McCain's POW years in explaining away the Miss Buffalo Chip gaffe, and in dealing with the allegation that he broke the rules and listened in on Barack Obama during the Rick Warren forum.

The words utterly disgraceful come to mind…