Because, she says, it’s beneath the dignity of the office to which he aspires. This was one of the arguments from righties during the outcry over the YouTube debate, if I’m not mistaken, that Reagan wouldn’t even take his jacket off inside the Oval Office let alone gab with a talking snowman. Alas: Times change. The real lament shouldn’t be that McCain would stoop to a cameo on a dopey comedy show (he ain’t the first Republican candidate to do that, needless to say), it’s that his refusal to do so for the reason Ingraham gives would probably alienate more voters than it would attract in making him look humorless. And is this really that lamentable? What’s wrong with SNL? Reagan’s sense of humor was one of his most winning qualities and an absolute political asset. If McCain uses his in the context of sketch comedy instead of, say, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, what’s the damage? What makes this so unrespectable, in other words?

Exit quotation: “Humphrey later said that not doing it may have cost him the election.”