Making excuses for John McCain

We're already getting a sneak peek of the free pass that John McCain will get from the media in the fall. Just like George W. Bush before him, McCain knows that a towel snap and a few barbecue ribs and tubs of slaw and he's got the entire press pack in his back pocket, ready to slobber all over him all the way to the White House.

Exhibit A: Chuck Todd on Press the Meat (presumably the meat was barbecue ribs) this morning:

MR. RUSSERT: And then, then Lindsey Graham, who he was with, and then Joe Lieberman both tried to say to him, al-Qaeda is Sunni, not trained by the Shiite Iranian government. Does that kind of stumble hurt a McCain candidacy?

MR. TODD: Well, what’s odd about the, the stumble is that it–is it a stumble or was it, or was it that this talking point that he’d been, that he’d been using for actually a couple weeks or over a week, where he was talking about sort of almost blurring that the, the enemy of al-Qaeda and the enemy of the, the Shia-trained Iranians and sort of blurring them as one enemy. And the, the question is, did he just sort of–he truncated it to the point where he ended up misspeaking. The, the problem, of course, McCain has is that he can’t, you know, he doesn’t want to make it so that he, he forgot it for a minute. You know, he’s–because of the age issue, he can’t ever look like he’s having a senior moment. So instead, he’s better off going ahead and saying, you know, OK, so he misspoke. Even if he gets dinged on the experience stuff, “Oh, he says he’s Mr. Experience. Doesn’t he know the difference between this stuff?” He’s got enough of that in the bank, at least with the media, that he can get away with it. I mean, the irony to this is had either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama misspoke like that, it’d have been on a running loop, and it would become a, a big problem for a couple of days for them.

Exhibit B: Brit Hume, Faux Noise, ignoring the fact that John McCain has said on FOUR SEPARATE INCIDENTS that Iran is training Al-Qaeda in Iraq:

I think it’s probably just a blip, but it was a bigger blip than he wanted or needed at the time. I think the overall impression of the trip was this is a man welcomed by, knowledgeable of and comfortable with foreign leaders across a big part of the globe. But the mistake, nonetheless, raises questions not about his knowledgability—we all kinda believe he has that—the question, perhaps, about his age, which is an issue. You know, the feeling was not that he’s a dope, didn’t know his way around, that he might have had a senior moment there, and I think that’s unfortunate for him. But I think probably the trip was a net plus.

Because EVERYTHING is BY DEFINITION a net plus for John McCain. It is a law of the media universe.

Shorter Brit Hume:

Mmmmmmmmmm......barbecue....ribs......

Makes possible incipient Alzheimer's seem like just a charming personality quirk. Nothing to worry about if the potential leader of the free world has some plaques in his neurons, eh?

Exhibit C: Bay Buchanan on CNN:

KING: Bay, you heard McCain. He messed up the Shia thing, the Shia/Sunni, Iran training Sunni al Qaeda, which is not true. A successful trip? A gaffe that hurts him?

BUCHANAN: I don’t think the gaffe hurts him at all in the long run. It was something that — you know, you can almost see anyone could make that mistake. He’s very, very knowledgeable, John, as you know, in foreign policy. He’s got a reputation. And so I don’t think he’s hurt on that.

And almost anyone would, especially after the last seven years, in which the Bush Administration has done its best to equate Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and Hamas and Hezbollah and every extremist group in the Middle East. Don't we expect the President of the United States to know the difference? Oh, yeah, I forgot....the primary qualification for the presidency is whether you want to drink beer with the guy. And eat ribs with him.

Mmmmmmmmmm........barbecue......ribs......