In 1980, the Nashua Telegraph, my home paper, accidentally made history by letting Ronald Reagan get all drama star about microphone ownership.

Now, the Keene Sentinel, just next door, is making waves with this videotaped interview from last summer in which John McCain demonstrates that he had no idea that any of the last three major economic crises of this country were going to happen:

Maybe subprime mortgage wasn’t something that you focused on every day. Were you surprised?

Yeah. And I was surprised at the dot com collapse¹, and I was surprised at other times in our history². I don’t know if ‘surprised’ is the word³.

S & L’s?

Yeah, the S & L.

Is this bigger than that?

I don’t know the dimensions.

¹ John McCain can, I admit, be pardoned for this one, since he presumably thought “Dot Com” was the name of the lovably buffoonish Russian ingénue from the 1918 Disney film “Mickey Bolsheviki.”

² I presume this means the bombing of the battleship Maine.

³ You need to offer him the 1700s spelling. It is “moste Overly Dumfoundede,” Mr. McCain.

(Via Blue Hampshire)