Posted: On the door of the mall shuttlePIPE DREAM, Ariz. -- Trying to steal Barack Obama's Zeus-like European thunder, Republican nominee John McCain turned the page on what by all accounts was his campaign's worst week by today announcing his pick for a walking mate: 83-year-old Minneapolis resident Mildred Pearl Mabel Higgins.
Fittingly, McCain made his announcement in front of the Mall of America's Old Navy store.
Higgins, a lifelong Minnesotan known for her easy spirit, has been an active and outspoken advocate for mall-walking since the great 1964 Mall-Walk on Washington. She also organized the nation's first formal walker's rights advocacy group called "Mall or Nothing," which lobbied for the right to walk the open spaces of airplane hangars, dairy barns and nuclear power facilities in addition to malls.
She is widely considered the great-grandmother of mall-walking -- and 8-year-old Johnny Higgins of Edina, Minn.
"My friends, I'll be 72 years old on inauguration day," McCain said in front of a busy Sbarro. "That's pretty old by anyone's standards, which is why I was so careful in picking a walking mate who understands these issues. When there's a knock at the White House door at 3 a.m., America can be sure that it will be Mildred Pearl Mabel Higgins saying, 'Mr. President, put on your Rockports. It's time to take the shuttle over to the mall.' That, my friends, is the kind of leadership that comes only with age."
Barack Obama's campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs told a reporter from AARP The Magazine that Obama has no plans to pick a walking mate but that the Illinois senator has the utmost respect for seniors, which was met with a blank stare.
"I said, 'SENATOR OBAMA HAS NO PLANS TO PICK A WALKING MATE BUT HAS THE UTMOST RESPECT FOR SENIORS,'" he repeated.
"Jesus, put in your hearing aid," he added quietly.
