So long, spoiled children

See where I'm going with this? College kids are all awful: spoiled, lazy, swanning around with entitlement and privilege -- not to mention unblemished, agile and totally free of those tiny lines that appear around the eyes and mouth around the time you set up a 401(k) plan.

Visit any college classroom -- at the University of Spoiled Children, Harvard, Yale, Puget Sound, doesn't matter -- and you'll see row upon row of attractive young people tapping away on their MacBook Pros, secretly IMing each other and pretending to listen. And why listen? The class is almost assuredly pass/fail, and the requirements -- two short papers, one essay-based exam -- are pain- stakingly designed to move them in a sprightly, untroubled fashion to graduation, where they'll cheer themselves hoarse ("We did it!! We achieved our dreams!!") and pretend not to notice their threadbare, vitamin-deficient, nearly broke parents sweltering in the hot sun. "Is it over?" their parents will ask themselves. "Can we maybe stop buying food in the day-old section?"

McCain was probably just teasing his wife a bit with his "spoiled children" line, but as summer drags on and his campaign searches for a winning message, I think he may have hit on a powerful theme.

Look, he's 71, and for all his great qualities, I don't think he's really going to capture the messenger-bag-and-ironic-T-shirt set. It's pretty clear that his opponent -- young, sleek, slender, hip -- is going to carry New Haven, Cambridge, Berkeley and Ann Arbor.

So I say, go on the attack. Point out their expensive computers -- which they use for music and TV watching -- and their expensive blue jeans and their entitled, disease-free lives. Point out how creepily physically fit they are. Point it all out to the voters and turn this election from being about left versus right, or Democrat versus Republican, into a winnable one: young versus old.

John McCain -- tough guy, war hero, straight-talker -- is poised to give America's college kids what they richly deserve: an electoral swirly.

I'd vote for that.