During the twilight of his presidency, Ronald Reagan was known to be forgetful. While traveling in Latin America, he was mixing up countries. “I am very happy to be in Argentina,” he was reported to have said when in actual fact he was in Brazil.

Then, the media laughed it all off. Some within the inner circle of the Reagan’s White House did suspect something was wrong but kept mute. Years after, Reagan himself came out to acknowledge that he had Alzheimer.

Many politicians who are constantly on the road, speaking and taking questions, do make mistakes. Even young ones like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had been caught in slips of tongue.

Obama once spoke of 57 states in the United States. He also referred to the Canadian Prime Minster as President.

But the spate of recent misstatements by John McCain is troubling even to his most ardent supporters.

It is understandable if a 71 year old man confuses Shiite with Sunni. After all, I do confuse dodge with doge.

Even when McCain is speaking of Iraq but referring to Afghanistan, that is a long stretch, but hey, it may be that the long campaign days was beginning to get to him.

But to refer to Russia’s Vladimir Putin as the president of Germany, now that is over the bar. First of all, Germany has no president. They have a Chancellor. Second of all, Russia and Germany, at different points might have been in America’s black book, but one has emerged from rehab a reformed nation while the other is still going through relapses.

Also for one whose strongest point has been foreign affairs to state that Iran was training Al-Qaeda was baffling.

What is troubling with McCain’s gaffes are that they are severe. Sudan is not Somalia as McCain said. Because if Sudan is Somalia, then where is Darfur in McCain’s mind? Czechs and the Slovaks are no longer in Czechoslovakia as McCain said. Because if that was to be true, then East Germans may still be climbing over the Berlin Wall in the mind of McCain. Confusing Bob Dole with John McCain will not be troubling. But confusing Flavor Fav with Bill Cosby is a cause for concern.

While Russia enthusiasts like Kim Zigfeld will never forgive McCain for the Russian mix up, he probably has lost the Pennsylvania electoral votes for calling Green Bay Packers the Pittsburgh Steelers

Let us hope it is just old age and not something as impairing as a serious medical condition. In November, we should be electing a president and not a man who will set up a committee that will actually run the country on his behalf.

In the meantime, we wait to see if he will confuse his poster girl second wife, Cindy, with his limping first wife, Carol. If and when that happens, nobody needs to announce that the basket has lost its base.