Have you ever seen those soccer games where one player barely brushes against another, and the other player immediately collapses onto the ground, clutching their limb as if it had been severely mangled, all so they can wrangle a penalty shot?

That’s McCain right now. Bob Schieffer–not Wes Clark–used the words “gotten shot down,” and Clark simply said that that wasn’t a qualification for being president. That in a conversation where Clark (a) was clearly framing the entire discussion as a matter of strict qualifications and not an attack on McCain’s character, and (b) Clark had just gotten through laying effusive praise upon McCain, admiring as being a “hero.”

Sullivan’s antics aside, anyone who seriously considers this anything more than a blip is overreacting to the extreme. Even if you do take offense at the language, it was Schieffer’s language, and Clark’s statement did nothing more than mirror it.

But this is what the McCain campaign has been reduced to: making incredibly exaggerated claims at injury whenever even the slightest brush involving McCain’s wartime record is perceived.

There has been this meme going around that McCain, in his dignity and humility, has never used his war record to his political advantage. This is wholly untrue: McCain has always used his war record, mentions it all the time, and plays it up to ultimate effect–which is one reason it is the most-known thing about McCain. If he were truly humble, we wouldn’t know much about it. Bob Dole is more the humble type–people would comment on that pen he holds to hide his disability, but Dole himself doesn’t tout it much, just as Senator Inouye doesn’t bring up his Congressional Medal of Honor all the time; this is why fewer people know about these things.

But McCain? He almost like Rudy Giuliani–not quite using a noun, a verb, and “I was a POW” in every sentence, but sometimes it seems like it. He constantly drops a joke at the slightest hint of inconvenience, saying that “I haven’t had this much fun since I was in Hanoi.” The whole “I’m offended by aspersions cast on my war record” act is nothing more than yet another attempt to capitalize on this whole thing.

You know what I wonder about most in this whole charade? Why the hell was Bob Schieffer acting so angry and offended when Wes Clark, after lauding McCain as a hero, simply stated that McCain’s service did not give him experience or expertise that would translate into talents of use to a president? Watch the video–Schieffer comes across as almost scandalized.

Why?