“I would rather speak at a rally or a political gathering any place outside of the country after I am president of the United States,” McCain told O’Donnell. “But that’s a judgment that Sen. Obama and the American people will make.”
But, ahmmmm….
However, on June 20, McCain himself gave a speech in Canada — to the Economic Club of Canada — in which he applauded NAFTA’s successes. An implicit message behind that speech was that Obama had been critical of the trade accord. Also, McCain’s trip to Canada was paid for by the campaign.
and:
Andrea Mitchell is reporting that McCain is criticizing Obama for being overseas while voters are struggling at home. Which, Duncan points out, means McCain forgot not only that he personally challenged Obama to go overseas to Iraq, but also that he flew to Columbia and Mexico earlier this month to showcase his mad foreign policy skilz
I know we’re not supposed to be injecting age into this campaign. Heaven forbid. But you really have to wonder, don’t you? I mean, John McCain seems to be forgetting an awful lot of important things lately.
Update: Suggestions for how McCain can start spending some of his campaign funds*:
vs. 
*speaking for myself only.
jake
Age, shmage. He’s a Republican. Right now he’s sucking his thumb because Obama took the foreign policy plank of Mr. I know how to win wars! I know how to win war’s platform, and broke it over his head.
Now what does McCrank have left? His expertise on the economy? Or women’s issues?
$50 says McCane finds some pressing reason to do a world tour, perhaps go for a stroll through another market in Iraq.
Nancy Irving
Rather than forgetting, I think it’s a matter of McCain’s still not appreciating the reality of Google and Youtube.
He is still operating in a past where a politician could say or do anything, without fear that his past words or actions would come back to haunt him.
He really thinks that something he did or said two months ago has fallen into the memory-hole, never to reappear.
Truly, Google and Youtube are the worst things to happen to politicians since Gutenberg invented the printing press.
Crusty Dem
I, for one, am thoroughly impressed by McCain’s complete lack of internal consistency. If the press were actually reporting everything he’s doing, showing his complete and utter fail, this race would be over right now. In a sane world, McCain would be getting the full-on Dukakis treatment, he’s the worst campaigner of modern times, but the press just loves their “daddy”.
liberatemeiexinfernis
I know this is cliche by now, but about Viagra? Aside from just bringing fire to the loins, it has been sorta proven to bring vitality to the brains, which McCain may need. Scientists recently found that pilots had much better concentration in flight when they took Viagra. you should put a picture of the blue pill along side the gingko balboa.
The Grand Panjandrum
McCain has more problems than that beginning to bubble to the surface. This misstep may not be such a little deal. At least not to anyone who gives a shit about race relations in this country.
Evidently McCain can’t remember why Deters might be the wrong guy for any position in his campaign.
Read the entire post and the linked articles. Is this what we want from our President? I do not believe for one second that McCain is a racist. But his campaign (and by extension himself) don’t seem to be able to avoid people of questionable backgrounds. Is it just bad luck? Is it coincidence, or has McCain turned a blind eye to these sorts of things? Didn’t he just go through a few other SNAFU’s with Gramm, and then prior to that with other surrogates and staffers saying stupid things and/or having questionable ties to outfits that would contradict McCains stated policy positions?
Taken as a whole these lapses in judgment by McCain and his campaign should start taking a toll on his prospects for winning in November. But, alas, the press will have to remove their lips from his dick long enough to take notice.
My friends, the liberal media indeed. Well, I’m off the plaster the neighborhood with Che Guevara posters.
Lancelot Link
Another political gathering that must have slipped his mind, from way back in March….
LONDON — Sen. John McCain took a break from meetings with high-level government officials in Europe and the Middle East this afternoon for a good, old-fashioned $1,000 to $2,300 presidential fundraiser in the heart of downtown London. (….) an invitation sent out by the campaign says the fundraiser was organized “by kind permission of Lord Rothschild OM GBE and the Hon. Nathaniel Rothschild.”
Lord Rothschild, surprisingly enough, is married to “Hillraiser” Lynn de Rothschild, who was on Fox and CNN earlier this month calling Obama “elitist”.
El Cid
I know it was a quote but, “O”, ColOmbia, not Columbia. Colombia.
Colombia. The country our press only covers when it involves the left wing guerrillas or Fred Hiatt crying because a trade agreement hasn’t been approved.
The government-linked right wing narco-paramilitary death squads don’t merit U.S. news coverage, even thought 1/3 of the Uribe-linked Congress is either in jail or investigation for collaborating with the death squads; it doesn’t even make the news that the right wing narco-paramilitaries, long Colombia’s biggest drugs traffickers, are now reckoned there to be the biggest partners of the massive Mexican drug cartels.
jon
McCain only said he’d rather not do what he did, not that he didn’t actually do it.
Nuance, baby! He’s stepping in it.
Conservatively Liberal
I think McCain ought to start taking Namenda. If not that, then I recommend daily electroshock therapy.
Maybe he can get ‘charged up’ on his next trip to Iraq.
SpotWeld
The other possibility is that McCain is simply putting out into the media the sound bites that his campaign staff is giving to him.
This would mean he unquestioningly goes with what his inner circle tells him to do and that he’s surrounded himself with idiots.
Eight years ago I might have assumed that such a double-whammy was less likely than just chronic forgetfulness.
Jeffro
Hey, speaking of eight years ago, how about Faux News using McCain footage from the 2000 campaign in order to make him look younger n’ tanner?
‘S true – saw it on MSNBC last night.
They, like McCain, just think they can pull this crap however and whenever they want.
Sharon
Watching the current occupant of the White House both in 2000 and 2004, I couldn’t belive anyone would vote for such an obvious idiot either (sorry John).
But the media and our corporate overlords made sure the frat bully won. Never assume it can’t happen again. No matter how bad McSame fucks up.
The Grand Panjandrum
Is that you Armando?
El Cid
There is another option. Since McCain is fairly sure he will never pay any price in the media for any gaffe or wrongness or stupidity, the goal may be to simply shotgun out soundbits until the major news media pick their favorites up and run with them.
liberal
Crusty Dem wrote,
Correct. While he might be making these mistakes due to cognitive decline, a reasonable alternative hypothesis is that he’s done the calculation, and thinks the benefits of attacking Obama in this manner outweigh the tiny risk that the press will actually call him on any of this nonsense.
liberal
The Grand Panjandrum wrote,
Depends how you define racist. IMHO just because someone themselves isn’t in their deepest personal convictions a bigot doesn’t mean they can’t be a racist.
IIRC Wallace wasn’t a racist, or at least not terribly by the standards in the South at the time, until he lost some election, and is famously quoted as saying “I will never be out-n*****ed again.”.
Similarly, I don’t know of any evidence that Reagan was personally a bigot, but he was willing to his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi to give the good old boys a message.
So we might say that McCain is perhaps a racist of opportunity. In some sense that’s worse, because the person knows it’s wrong, and makes the choice.
Dave S.
I’m with Spotweld on this (McCain reading off cue cards prepared by incompetents), with the additional aspect of banking on the American electorate’s short-term memory.
The Obama campaign seems to be following Napoleon’s advice to “Never interrupt an enemy while he is making a mistake” but I picture their ad staff carefully amassing McCain soundbites for a series of highly effective ads to deploy in October.
slippytoad
I used to mock trolls on Slashdot with the following formula:
If you are trolling, your modus operandi consists of posting things that are self-evidently stupid in a public forum in order to get people to react by telling you how stupid you are. Ergo, it is impossible to tell if a troll is a smart person pretending to be stupid, or a shockingly dumb, knuckle-dragging over-hanging brow imbecile who drools on himself in a puddle of his own piss as he jabs pitifully at his keyboard. And it doesn’t matter. Trolling is stupid behavior reserved for juveniles who snicker behind their hands at how “clever” they are.
Pretending to be racist in order to win the votes of racists is following that same formula. It doesn’t matter if Reagan wasn’t racist before he wanted to win the votes of racists. He became a bigoted, simple-minded, fearful, ignorant, self-centered, stupid asshole the moment he pandered to that crowd. I could care less if he snickered behind his hand to Nancy that he had the rubes going for him now — he fed their asshole bigotry and therefore he became, by extension, an asshole bigot.
The Thinking Man's Mel Torme
And the press is obliging him every time. I’m really astonished at the blogoid enthusiam which greets each new Mccain meltdown. Yes, in a rational world his campaign would be going down for the third time, but the latest national averages and the swing-state Q-polls amply demonstrate we’re not in a rational world. The low-information cohort which will likely decide this election doesn’t give a french flying fuck about the real story.
The Other Steve
I would just like to point out that Canada and Mexico are not technically over seas. You can get there by car.
So technically, McCain is correct.
Z
We should just call them McGaffs.
OriGuy
But not Colombia. There’s no road across the Darien Gap in Panama.
Brachiator
Oh, teh stupid it hurts!
In early July Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin, explained to us how foreign travel is a net plus for McCain (CAMPAIGN SCORECARD):
Now watch the conservative talk show goons, wingnut bloggers and the weekend pundit parade talk about how smart it was for McCain to stay home and focus on the economy while Obama is on his world tour.
It is becoming clear that the media is not simply interested in keeping the presidential contest close; reporters like ABC’s Charlie Gibson and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell are afraid that Obama will upset the status quo, and the pleasant mutually parasitic relationship between the press and political powers.
As an aside, coverage of McCain’s Latin American jaunt demonstrates how foolish it is to try to “prove” that the press loves Obama more by counting the stories devoted to each candidate. McCain went to Colombia to show that he was on board with the Republicans favorite memes — free trade, a fetish for military equipment and simplistically tough stands on extremely difficult areas (the war on drugs):
But because of that perpetual cloud of bad luck and ineptitude that hangs over the McCain campaign, there was little reason to write about his trip in the first place, and any follow-up analysis was completely overshadowed by stories about the dramatic rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and 15 other hostages in Colombia.
Apparently, all memory of McCain’s Colombian trip has been erased from the collective memory of all US reporters, and also apparently from McCain’s mind as well.
But McCain prefers to travel in his wife’s corporate jet. And of course, you can’t easily get to Colombia by car.
So technically, and every other way, McCain is full of shit.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
El Cid at 8:03, liberal at 8:06 and Brachiator at 10:35 pretty much nail it. A pretty good chunk of the press is openly and nakedly trying to throw the election, because if Obama wins they have to start all over again from scratch rebuilding their social networks of access and patronage.
Also, remember that one of Obama’s primary campaign slogans for internal guidance was “No Drama”. If he wins and takes the same approach in the WH, that will be to our current shallow news media like the entropic heat death of the universe. Their careers depend on preventing it from happening or at least turning this campaign into an epic battle.
Alex
No, he is full of shit. He attacked Obama for giving a political speech out of the country, not “overseas.”
Last time I checked, Canada was still out of the country, and that is where Straight-talkin’ John delivered a political speech last month.
Hypocrite or doddard, your choice.
Tony J
Given his recent “The Media are on Obama’s side because they’re talking about him!” outburst, it looks like Option 3. His campaign is tanking so badly that it’s no longer enough for the MSM to just cover for him and keep the race close. He’s basically demanded that the MSM enact a propaganda Surge to save his campaign by only covering the Obama campaign through the medium of GOP talking-points.
In other words, “You say you’re on my side, now I need you to man up and prove it, because I sure as hell don’t see how I can win this election if you don’t.”
And the probability is they’ll do just that. You think the MSM has been anti-Obama up till now? You ain’t seen anything yet.
bago
It used to be the job of the media to call politicians on their flipflops and pandering. McCain lubed them up with some barbecues and donuts so they would forget. However since he doesn’t know the google, he fails to realize that a bunch halfway competent people can string together the contradictions and post them on youtube. Again and again they rely upon the press to be stenographers, while bloggers are analyzing the transcripts and doing the actual reporting. You can pay off a couple of stenographers with some front seats, but you can’t buy off the whole net.
Old fashioned politics is going to be killed by the internet just like Gutenberg destroyed the catholic hierarchy by allowing the commoners to read what the bible said for themselves.
Just Some Fuckhead
The North Vietnamese broke John McCain’s memory, my friends.
Delia
And that only goes to show that he is a True Hero who has passed The Commander-In-Chief Test and whose Integrity must Never Be Questioned.
Just Some Fuckhead
The North Vietnamese broke John McCain’s integrity too, my friends.
Delia
Are you trying to make Bob Schieffer cry?
here4tehbeer
McCane is clearly coming unwrapped. He’s making Amy Winehouse look like the Sane One.
But that’s the thing about seat-of-your-diapers Serial Lying – there’s absolutely no way to keep all the stories straight, and eventually the spin will escalate and ultimately result in a simultaneous Black Hole Implosion / Super Nova Explosion.
It’s kinda like Big Bang meets The Suck.
yet another jeff
Hell, they can’t even travel within Arizona without taking the jet.
Tony DeVito
I’m confused as to what media some people are watching.
I agree with Crusty Dem: McCain is the worst campaigner of modern times and if the media paid more attention to him he wouldn’t have a chance. But, “The press just loves their ‘daddy’.” ? I hope by “daddy” you mean Obama because he’s the only one the media pays attention to. …And the Grand Panjandrum says, “But, alas, the press will have to remove their lips from his dick long enough to take notice.”
So McCain is the media’s “daddy” and the press will have to remove their lips from McCain’s dick (even though everyone knows the press isn’t paying attention to McCain for good or ill)?
Look at the facts: Obama took a trip to the Middle East and all three news anchors went with him. Whose getting the blow-job?
I am not defending McCain…I think he’s pathetic. However, if the press weren’t so busy kissing Obama’s ass and actually DID spend some time on McCain, perhaps as Crusty Dem said, the race would be over.