THINGS THE CANDIDATES SHOULD STOP SAYING

McCain:

“My friends.” I ain’t your friend, John. I’m just a cranky old man like you.

“Maverick.” James Garner was Maverick. Tom Cruise was Maverick (in Top Gun). You just have trouble getting along with your peers.

Obama:

“I’ll go through the federal budget line-by-line.” No you won’t. You have a whole bureaucracy for that, the Office of Management and Budget. Stop making the federal government sound simple. It ain’t and never will be.

“Deregulation caused our problems.” No it didn’t. The sectors of the financial industry that caused our problems—investment banks, hedge funds, private equity funds, mortgage brokers—weren’t deregulated. They couldn’t have been because they were never subject to much regulation in the first place.

Biden:

“I’m from the heartland of America, Scranton, Pennsylvania.” With all due respect to Scranton, we’ve gotta have a better heartland than that.

Palin:

Everything. The voice, the inflections, the dropped gs, remind us of (1) the movie Fargo and (2) the current droppin' gs President, and ya betcha ya know where he has taken us.