Newsweek has the story. Apparently, the McCains own a beachfront condo in San Diego, and have not paid property taxes on it in more than four years. The media may have saved them an even greater embarrassment–the condo could have gone into default soon, and would have been auctioned off to pay the bills. The McCains have already sent in a check to correct the issue, but they’re still short by close to two thousand dollars.

This is less a matter of greed or corruption, more simply one of sloppy management:

San Diego County officials, it turns out, have been sending out tax notices on the La Jolla property, an oceanfront condo, for four years without receiving a response. County records show the bills, which were mailed to a Phoenix address associated with Mrs. McCain’s trust, were returned by the post office.

I’d put good odds on the bet that the media does not make much a deal about this. Already, the story has been out for several hours, and yet none of the major media outlets have this story on their front pages. It’ll probably be more of a page-two story, when and if they cover it at all.

In truth, it’s not really a big deal–the McCains let an address get out of date and didn’t notice one less bill for property taxes on their numerous real estate holdings. A little sloppy, but hardly criminal or even all that interesting. However, this is an election year, and McCain is running for president, so the rules say that this story has at least one day’s worth of play time as an embarrassment for the candidate, while people make jokes and titter over the matter. Worse for McCain, it will play up the fact that he married a rich beer heiress, that this “man of the people” is embarrassingly wealthy, with at least seven homes in the couple’s possession.

Even more to point is the fact that–as the old yardstick shows–if this were Obama, it’d be a bigger story, people would take it a lot more seriously, and it would play a lot longer in the media, being remembered and mentioned more down the line.

But the reason for this is not just that the media is more willing to take swipes at Obama than they are at McCain–something the media has clearly, in fact unmistakably demonstrated over the past several months. A big part of this is the fact that Republicans are far more willing and certainly more adept at taking such a non-issue and spinning a web of lies, misconceptions, and smears to damage the opposition. Democrats will try to make an issue of this, but they’ll stick pretty closely to the facts. Were this on Obama’s plate, the GOP would surely put out a legion of talking heads opining on how this shows Obama’s “elitism,” how he believes he doesn’t “have” to pay taxes, how he holds himself above the law, how he is a hypocrite, etc. etc. etc.–all the time pressing hard on how this is a “serious” matter and should be “looked into” much more closely.

Democrats, for all their faults, can’t make themselves descend to that level of dishonesty; for Republicans, it’s practically a reflex.