McCain’s oft-repeated Congress joke ringing true again
Thanks to the public’s chronic low regard for Congress, one of U.S. Sen. John McCain’s favorite jokes may never go out of style.
Speaking last week on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” McCain, R-Ariz., quipped: “Look, I guess we can get lower in the polls. We’re down to blood relatives and paid staffers now.”
As longtime McCain watchers know, he has used the “blood relatives” laugh line for years. It was a staple of McCain’s stump speeches and townhall-style meetings during his 2008 presidential race and his 2010 Senate re-election campaign. It made the transition to Twitter with him a couple of years ago. He used it in May during a speech at the 43rd annual Washington Conference on the Americas, according to a copy of the remarks on his Senate website.
Even recognition of McCain’s heavy reliance on the gag isn’t new. After McCain cracked about “blood relatives and paid staffers” during an August 2008 appearance on NBC’s The Tonight
Show with Jay Leno, the Chicago Tribune described it as “a standard one-liner.” In an online 2011 piece headlined “Time for John McCain to Retire ... This Joke,” a New York magazine writer documented at least 27 occasions in which McCain used it, dating back to 2006.
But as long as public opinion of Congress remains in the tank, the timehonored joke likely will hold its reliable spot in McCain’s repertoire. According to the pollsters at Gallup, Congress’ approval rating was 11 percent as of Oct. 3 to Oct. 6. In other developments: McCain found himself in another spat with a “tea party” conservative from Texas. This time, his foil wasn’t U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a leader of the unsuccessful “defund ‘Obamacare’ ” strategy whom McCain once described as a “wacko bird,” but the lesser-known U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas.
At the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., Gohmert ripped McCain over the Arizonan’s criticism of the GOP’s role in the government shutdown and publicly accused McCain of having “supported al-Qaida” in Syria. McCain has expressed support for the opposition Free Syrian Army but not the al-Qaida militants also fighting in the country’s civil war.
“Sometimes ... comments like that are made out of malice, but if someone has no intelligence, I don’t view it as being a malicious statement,” McCain said Wednesday when asked about Gohmert’s remarks during an NBC News interview.
» When asked on Face the Nation about Cruz’s impact on the GOP, McCain made the opposite observation about Cruz’s intellect.
“Oh, obviously, it’s very divisive in our party,” McCain said. “But Ted Cruz is entitled to his views, and he’s very articulate. He’s very intelligent.”
» A new book by Arizona political historian Jack August Jr. examines three generations of one of the Southwest’s most prominent farming families.
“The Norton Trilogy,” set for publication on Nov. 15 by TCU Press, also traces the evolution of water politics and the growth of agribusiness in Arizona and California through the lives of John R. Norton Sr. (1854-1923), John R. Norton Jr. (1901-1987) and John R. Norton III, 84. The third-generation John Norton served as President Ronald Reagan’s deputy secretary of Agriculture in the 1980s and later became an early supporter and financial benefactor of the Phoenix-based, libertarian-leaning watchdog organization the Goldwater Institute. As a member of Goldwater’s board of directors, Norton helped install future U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., as the institute’s executive director.
In the book’s foreword, former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., hails Norton III as a visionary agribusiness leader and expert on Colorado River water rights and hydropolitics.