McCain is barely coherent in this interview that Joe posted earlier. He looks terrible, sounds worse, and repeats the weird line about Palin being a national security expert because she lives close to Russia. That’s as ridiculous as Joe and me claiming that because we live near the Chinese Embassy we’re China experts.

But what’s more important is that in watching this video you can see why the McCain campaign doesn’t let Mccain talk to the press any more. Why the McCain campaign is using Sarah Palin as a virtual human shield for John McCain, bringing her to every event to deflect attention away from McCain. Why the McCain campaign is bringing up so many distracting issues like lipstick and pigs and lies about the Bridge to Nowhere. They’re desperately trying to deflect our attention away from the fact that John McCain got old some time in the last year or so, he’s no longer the quick, smart, energetic man he once was. And it would scare the voters to see what he’s become. So they hide him. Yes, you’ll notice that later on in the interview, when McCain gets angry, he kind of wakes up and his answers become more coherent. Sometimes McCain is his old self, albeit an older version, but lots of times he’s someone else entirely. Are we really going to have a president who’s coherent and alert half the time, but the other half is confused, bumbling, and somewhat incoherent?

CBS News’ blog picks up on the video, and eviscerates McCain for it.