McCain Rocks SNL

In this stunning, never-ending presidential campaign, it was a moment that resonated as both its most endearing and its most dispiriting.

If you haven’t seen the snippets of John McCain’s appearance on SNL last Saturday, just three days before the election, do yourself a favor. Check ‘em out at nbc.com.

The opening segment where McCain and Tina Fey as Sarah Palin are pitching at QVC is genius satire. Cindy McCain, bless her stoic, shrewish heart, even shows up and mugs for the camera in her own very measured way.

That McCain, who by all accounts will lose the election, would come on this stage and make fun of himself and the whole process says a lot about the man. It shows that he is decent and self effacing. It shows how much he chose or was forced or convinced to sublimate those instincts of decency in order to try to get elected. (To his credit, when running mate Sarah Palin’s incendiary attacks against Obama started to get vicious, McCain reigned in her diatribe and vitriol as well as his own.)

Thus the very, very funny segments are as sweet and sad as they are shockingly funny.

This campaign has been long and extraordinarily bitter. We are a country divided at a time when pulling together is as important as it has ever been. The next president — whether it’s Obama or McCain in a stunning last minute upset — has a mountain of work to do.

He must attempt to right the economy. Attempt to reestablish America’s standing as a world power. Calm the cultural divisiveness that plagues the U.S. And those are just for starters.

My hope is that, whoever loses Tuesday, does so with class and dignity and talks and acts in a manner that will unite rather than divide. I also pray that Obama, who I very much would like to see win, displays as much self effacement and willingness to laugh at his personal foibles as McCain did Saturday night. It would serve him well.

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I also have to give a thumbs up to Ben Affleck’s scathing take off on Keith Olbermann on the same SNL. The MSNBC talking head has turned into a liberal caricature of himself more quickly than even his counterparts, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, could have ever hoped. I share Olbermann’s politics. I’m glad that there’s a counterpoint to Fox’s abominable presentation of “news.”

I hate that he comes off as pompously as his right wing counterparts. Self righteous never plays well.