National polls have John McCain neck-and-neck with his presidential rival, or even ahead, but the presumptive Republican nominee insisted about 4,000 times to Jay Leno tonight that he's "the underdog." (Unlike Barack Obama, who's acting like he's already been elected Ayatollah!) Then Leno teased him about his 10 houses, and McCain responded that he was imprisoned for five years in Vietnam, so let's stop talking about his houses, because they didn't have any houses in a torture cell. What? The point seemed to be that McCain is not uppity, and instead of going to a fancy elite convention (this week) he's cracking wise with that other non-elite, hard-working underdog, Leno. This presumably is meant to play well with the bitters and "government pragmatists" in swing states. Here is some of the pitter patter (click the video icon).