“You dopes just got schooled, Finkel-style.”

One of the many things John McCain did last night that irritated me was repeatedly invoke the names of Russ Feingold and Joe Lieberman. It felt like a very calculated shout-out (we know how much his ticket likes shout-outs) to Jewish voters, who are turning their backs on him when he needs them the most.

If he wants to pander, that’s fine. What else can he do right now but pander? I’d just like to see him really commit to it, if that’s how he wants to play things. I want to see him take the stage in a yarmulke. I want newsreel footage of him dancing the horah in South Florida — though I don’t know what the occasion would be since he currently has nothing to be happy about.

Most of all, I want him to announce that if he becomes president he will appoint Fyvush Finkel, the beloved Yiddish theater actor and star of TV’s Boston Public, as secretary of the treasury. I mean, you say the name Fyvush Finkel once and it’s like saying Feingold and Lieberman twenty times.

What better way to get your point across? And it might actually sway some of my grandparents’ friends. Oh, sure, they’re all aghast at McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, and it’s true their rabbi belongs to Rabbis for Obama and is outspokenly anti-Palin. But they all loved Finkel on Picket Fences. That has to count for something.