A 96-year-old woman with a history of driving fast cars might seem like an unlikely campaign weapon, but it is one that the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, has deployed to good effect. Addressing concerns yesterday that he is too old to be US president, McCain invited anyone with doubts to meet his mother, Roberta, who has shown few signs in recent years that age has slowed her down.McCain, 71, likes to tell how his mother, who spends three months a year on holiday abroad, usually on long drives, was denied a rental car in Paris in 2006 on the grounds of age. She bought a car and drove it round France, shipped it back to the US and then drove it 3,000 miles from the east coast to the west.Speaking in Washington yesterday at the annual meeting of the Associated Press, he said Americans should judge him on his energy, his intellect, experience and judgement, not his age. He said he had out-campaigned his Republican rivals by working between 16 and 20 hours a day. "I am capable of doing that," he said. "I know I am doing that. If anyone has any further doubts, come and meet my 96-year-old mother."
A 96-year-old woman with a history of driving fast cars might seem like an unlikely campaign weapon, but it is one that the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, has deployed to good effect. Addressing concerns yesterday that he is too old to be US president, McCain invited anyone with doubts to meet his mother, Roberta, who has shown few signs in recent years that age has slowed her down.
McCain, 71, likes to tell how his mother, who spends three months a year on holiday abroad, usually on long drives, was denied a rental car in Paris in 2006 on the grounds of age. She bought a car and drove it round France, shipped it back to the US and then drove it 3,000 miles from the east coast to the west.
Speaking in Washington yesterday at the annual meeting of the Associated Press, he said Americans should judge him on his energy, his intellect, experience and judgement, not his age. He said he had out-campaigned his Republican rivals by working between 16 and 20 hours a day.
"I am capable of doing that," he said. "I know I am doing that. If anyone has any further doubts, come and meet my 96-year-old mother."
What more could you ask for - except possibly a story of how she ran an illegal still in her youth, and has friends who sleep wrapped in the Confederate flag?
It's easy - and fun - to mock, but he knows his audience, and he knows how to dramatise a patriotic point for them.
It was just a personal reaction. Aghast.
