There were two parts of the debate tonight where I honestly can’t figure out what McCain was thinking. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. I’m saying that, as a matter of fact, I do not know what was going on in McCain’s head - and I’m genuinely curious to find out.
Does McCain think Sarah Palin’s son, Trig, has Autism?
Here are the two excerpts from the debate last night where Senator McCain brought up the issue of special needs children.
Early in the debate he says:
She’ll be my partner. She understands reform. And, by the way, she also understands special-needs families. She understands that autism is on the rise, that we’ve got to find out what’s causing it, and we’ve got to reach out to these families, and help them, and give them the help they need as they raise these very special needs children.
She understands that better than almost any American that I know. I’m proud of her.
This first excerpt comes from very early in the debates. He only mentions autism once, and I thought - “OK He probably just slipped up. He meant to say Down Syndrome not Autism. But then toward the end of the debate he brings autism up again and clearly with the intent of bringing autism up as an issue that Sarah Palin is especially sensitive to. Here’s the excerpt.
And I just said to you earlier, town hall meeting after town hall meeting, parents come with kids, children — precious children who have autism. Sarah Palin knows about that better than most. And we’ll find and we’ll spend the money, research, to find the cause of autism. And we’ll care for these young children. And all Americans will open their wallets and their hearts to do so.
Notice he mentions ‘autism’ twice. In one of those instances, McCain is talking about what I assume is the recent surge of special needs families that Sarah Palin is attracting. But those families are all families with children with Down Syndrome - not autism.
So, I guess I’m kind of puzzled. Given the second passage it’s a little harder to write this off as a slip of the tongue. I suppose in the heat of the debate, given that he slipped once, one could argue that the word just became etched in his mind. That sometimes happens. Sometimes slips can get entrenched for a bit and get repeated several times.
However, I suspect that many will jump to another explanation - McCain thinks that Trig has autism.
What’s going on here in these two excerpts?
Full Transcript of the Debate
UPDATE: I Just found out from the first comment in this thread and a blog post here that Palin’s nephew has autism. If that’s true, then at least the McCain camp has an explanation for why McCain would associate autism with Palin.