This kind of thing can hurt a candidate:
In a telephone interview with the Orange County Register earlier this week, John McCain acknowledged he was unaware of the price of gas. The OC Register’s Martin Wicksol reports:
WICKSOL: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost?
MCCAIN: Oh, I don’t remember. Now there’s Secret Service protection. But I’ve done it for many, many years. I don’t recall and frankly, I don’t see how it matters.
I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.
Not pumping it is one thing. Not knowing it is another. It can and most likely will be used against him in a court of political battle. Big mistake. If his handlers are smart, they’ll make sure he knows the average price of gas in the U.S. every single day until the elections.
The tidbit above almost sounds like the big imagery problem the first George Bush got into when it was widely-reported — and used against him — that he didn’t even know how a supermarket check-out line worked at the time of the 1992 recession. And, in reality, it turned out that those reports were not entirely accurate. So the characterization of him was unfair.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.