McCAIN DOES EUROPE: SENATEUR HOTHEAD ENDS HIS CAMPAIGN TRIP WITH A SHOPPING SPREE WHILE THE ENGLISH NOTICE THAT HE'S FULL OF... BALONEY

Which is "a self-serving, vainglorious opportunist who was determined to be king at any cost?"

I lived in Europe for nearly seven years. These days just about everyone I know there can't wait to come to America to go shopping. People in London go to New York for a 3 day weekend because the bargains are so great. But McCain, who engineered the shipping of thousands of American aeronautics jobs overseas, preventing Boeing from getting a deal his lobbyist pals wanted to see go to a French company, is ending his ill-fated campaign junket to the Middle East and Europe with a shopping spree in overpriced London. Well... overpriced for the victims of George Bush's economic policies. I guess if I dumped my wife for a young woman whose daddy was the richest man in town-- the booze seller-- I wouldn't have to worry about where I bought my wardrobe either.

The European press gave McCain mixed reviews, although mostly people were just astounded at how old and out of it he seems. It didn't help that he began the trip by showing he didn't have a clue about who or why we're fighting in Iraq and then having to be corrected, on camera, by the faithful Joe Sancho Panza Lieberman. Eventually the press stopped counting how many times he confused Sunnis and Shi'a and Iran and al-Qaeda and just went back to investigating how many times Barack Obama may have plotted the overthrown of the government with his pastor.

Today's NY Times ran an overview of the European reaction. The French have dubbed him-- as have many of his Senate colleagues-- “Sénateur Hothead,” or, more prosaically, "tête brûlée” (presumably a typically nasty French langue-dans-joue reference to McCain's disastrous record of crashes as a pilot-- he lost 6 planes-- and the 1932 John Ford film about an airline pilot, even though McCain wasn't even old enough to fly in 1932). But no matter where he went, the one thing everyone noticed is that he's way too old, a polite way of saying that he's not stable, or at least not stable enough to be president.

Some reporters were clearly struck by his age. The Times of London called him an “old dog,” in its headline, and wrote that he “looks older than his 71 years and every bit as tired as he should be, having just dragged his campaign from the grave to achieve an improbable victory over half a dozen younger rivals for the Republican nomination.”

It goes on to describe its interview: “In his London hotel room, without the thick TV make-up that often masks the cancer scars on his face, he seems pale-- utterly exhausted-- almost frail.'’

The Jerusalem Post wrote earlier this week about the impressions its reporters had when they sat down with Mr. McCain at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem, writing that “McCain, 71, is not a young man, which is by no means a sin, a fault, nor something that should disqualify him from serving as president of the United States.'’

“It is just that in his presence you feel his age, you sense it. You feel it in the way he looks, especially around the neck, and in the way you can actually see him think, see him thinking. His answers are not of the rapid-fire variety; they are slower, more methodical.'’

Most embarrassing for the poor old dog was that the most credible and respected paper of all, the Guardian exposed another piece of the McCain hype machine and how they systematically lie to try to make him seem like something he isn't. They examined his bogus claim to be descended from Scotland's national hero, Robert the Bruce.

Of all the claims in support of John McCain's bid for the White House, perhaps none is quite as grand as this. As he arrived in London yesterday, the publishers of his new book insisted the Republican senator's family was descended from the Scottish king, Robert the Bruce.

For a veteran war hero [another highly dubious claim] staking his presidential campaign on military credentials, an ancestral link to a warrior who overcame the English to reclaim Scottish independence in 1314 has obvious appeal. But according to experts, the story may be no more than that. Asked by the Guardian to investigate McCain's family history, genealogists and medieval historians described the link to Robert the Bruce as "wonderful fiction" and "baloney."

The McCain link to Scotland was first mooted several years ago, but resurfaced this week on the eve of his trip to the UK, when Gibson Square, the publishers behind the senator's book, Hard Call, announced that "John McCain's family is of Scottish-Irish descent and related to the Scottish king, Robert the Bruce, on his mother's side."

The firm said the claim was sourced from the US presidential candidate's official website. But the ancestral link appears to originate from a 1999 family memoir, Faith of My Fathers. In it the senator said his great-grandparents "gave life to two renowned fighters, my great-uncle Wild Bill and my grandfather Sid McCain."

Wild Bill, he wrote, "joined the McCain name to an even more distinguished warrior family. His wife, Mary Louise Earle, was descended from royalty [a claim most Republican presidential candidates routinely make]. She claimed as ancestors Scottish kings back to Robert the Bruce." The passage goes on to say that Mary Louise Earle was also "in direct descent" from Emperor Charlemagne.

Not so, according to Dr Katie Stevenson, a lecturer in medieval studies at the University of St Andrews. "What wonderful fiction," she said. "Mary Louise Earle's claims to descent from Robert the Bruce are likely to be fantasy. Earle is not a Scottish name. I think it is incredibly unlikely that name would be related to Robert the Bruce. Charlemagne and Robert the Bruce were not connected-- that's ludicrous."

Claims of Scottish medieval ancestry, she said, are virtually impossible to prove unless traced through rare documentation. "There are no records of that nature. Any historian will tell you that it's virtually impossible to prove ancestry through the middle ages."

Dr Bruce Durie, academic manager, genealogical studies at the University of Strathclyde, said after initial research into Mary Louise Earle's ancestry, that there was "no existing documented link" to Robert the Bruce in terms of traced lineage. "If you're going to track the direct lineage of Robert the Bruce, he is Andrew Bruce, Earl of Elgin and Kincardine."

Durie pointed out that Robert I was believed to have had up to a dozen children-- several illegitimately. Basic calculations suggested there could be as many as 200 million people distantly related to him.

"In that sense McCain probably is descended from Bruce. So am I. So are you. So is everyone."

The secretary of the Scottish Genealogy Society, Ken Nisbet, combed through archive records of known descendants of Robert I for the Guardian, and concluded: "I wouldn't say it's a strong claim at all. This is speculation and it doesn't prove anything."

Some of the claims made in the family memoir about McCain's Scottish roots, he added, read like "some historical novel."

"It's a load of baloney-- it's a bit like the mixing of history and it's not accurate. A lot of Scots of Irish descent tend to say 'we're related to so and so'-- people say Robert the Bruce quite often. William Wallace is another one, as you can imagine."

Durie added that despite his romantic reputation, Robert the Bruce was "an absolute scoundrel."

"The first thing he did after taking power was destroy Stirling castle and he was a self-serving, vainglorious opportunist who was determined to be king at any cost," he said. [Well... there is that strong resemblance.]

A spokesman for McCain said last night: "The ancestry claim is based upon a genealogical study the McCain family had in their possession, which traced the McCain family roots back to Robert the Bruce."