Is McCain Losing It?

No, not the election -- he seems to be doing fine, according to recent polls. I'm talking about his marbles. At what point do all the vacant stares and mis-statements stop looking like a politician's occasional gaffe and seem more like the looseness of mind that comes with old age?

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo sees a pattern:

Let's be frank. On the campaign trail this cycle, McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries' names wrong, forgets things he's said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused. Any single example is inevitable for someone talking so constantly day in and day out. But the profusion of examples shows a pattern. Some of this is probably a matter of general unseriousness or lack of interest in policy areas like the economy that he doesn't care much about. But for any other politician who didn't have the benefit of years of friendship or acquaintance with many of the reporters covering him, this would be a major topic of debate in the campaign. It's whispered about among reporters. And it's evidenced in his campaign's increasing effort to keep him away from the freewheeling conversations with reporters that defined his 2000 candidacy. But it's verboten as a topic of public discussion.

Then there's this clip where Andrea Mitchell and company speculate that McCain's campaign is keeping him in the dark and manipulating him ("manipulating" is my word).

Which would help explain why McCain was unable to articulate his campaign's major charge that Obama was playing the race card last week when asked about it a presser in Florida (I am trying to locate that clip to post).

Update: Here's the video of McCain having a...well, senior moment. Keep in mind that the reporter is not asking about some obscure policy or federal program, or quizzing the Senator on the economy which he has said he doesn't know much about. No, the question is on a major charge made by the Senator's own campaign against Obama just days before this press availability.