It’s already out there, and in a way that he can’t fight against it without seeming really petty and defensive. It would backfire on him. So I think we can do a wee bit of issue-focused pile on without risking too much blowback.

My happy dreams all include the jaw-dropping contrasts we would see in a McCain/Obama debate.

For me, I think just seeing McCain up against a younger and more vivacious Obama will itself produce the kind of contrast that couldn’t be ignored.

Before my mother-in-law moved away from Florida, we would visit her there (always during the winter. I wonder why that is?) and listen to her and her friends kvetch about their aches and pains, their inability to go-go-go even through the course of a single day let alone day after day, and how so-and-so was “really slipping”.

I think you give the post-retirement crowd too little credit. They may, and probably would, rise up in giant rebellion against you if you dissed McCain or any one of them on the basis of age alone. But I suspect most would readily acknowledge that being President is “a young man’s (or woman’s) game” that they personally no longer have the energy for so how could McCain?

Remember, too, that Reagan was younger than McCain would be at his inauguration. We now know that Alzheimer’s claimed him certainly during his second term and quite possibly during his first term as well. Everyone (or at least everyone in the vulnerable age range) recognizes that Alzheimer’s does not discriminate, nor does it give much warning. And we’re nowhere near even being able to predict and avert its onset, let alone cure it.

Would anyone really want the lobbyists and other assorted nuts who are trusted McCain advisors running the show, especially when every effort is made to disguise the fact that they’re running the show?