Good old “block and bridge,” a standard PR manoeuvre, doesn’t get better than this.

Senator John McCain handled a question from a New Hampshire high schooler last week by combining it with another risky, yet well-placed tactic – the insult. At a New Hampshire high school, asked about the possibility that he might die in office if elected (yes High Schoolers ask the sharpest questions), McCain took the “are you too old to run the country?” subtext, and talked about how he can barely identify with young people’s music tastes. Then he went out to talk about the pace of his campaigning and his vigor. Before anyone noticed that he had blocked the real question, he ended with “thanks for the question, you little jerk!” It got the requisite laughs, and the YouTube video upload -viewed 323,934 times to date.

Compare this to the “Maccaca” response that unraveled Senator George Allen’s campaign this time last year (that YouTube video has been viewed over 359,000 times) and it’s interesting to see how a mature (read: media trained) public figure could take a hardball question, say something risky even, and get a point across.

All this, too, after McCain’s crack media team quit his campaign.