Hey, I Like to Watch My Swim Trunks Inflate!

Each of the major candidates this season has his or her own pop-culture surrogates or inspirations: Hillary Clinton has Tina Fey, Barack Obama has Will.i.am. Last night, John McCain appeared on David Letterman, and it would appear that the Republican Party is about to nominate... Don Rickles.

A clip of C.P.O. Sharkey's performance appears after the jump:

On late night as on the campaign stump, I still think McCain is a little stiff reading prepared lines, but whoever wrote the gags, it was a fairly good match of candidate to comedic style. And if the election doesn't work out for him, he and Letterman might just consider doing a Matthau-Lemmon-style cranky-old-men comedy. I mean, Letterman looks like the kind of guy who goes into town for turpentine too, doesn't he?

In the meantime, the Obama campaign continues to provide a New Deal-scale jobs program for the writers of novelty songs:

And in the interest of equal time, the writer of Hillary4U&Me is back with another campaign song. (Fun fact: apparently "Obama" rhymes with "mama"!) Here's the audio. Don't say you weren't warned.