All irrelevant nonsense about the poetic “citizen of the world” reference aside, it’s hard to see Obama’s Berlin speech as anything but momentous. In large part it is because of the message, both the plain message and the underlying one: while fiercely patriotic to America, the speech was also welcoming and accepting to the world. What Obama did, in part, was to roll back the clock, bring us back to the days after 9/11, and showed what Bush should have done, and in lieu of that, what people around the world will not only accept but strongly desire–that we do our best to erase the past seven years and start over again with new hope and optimism. Even as he outlined the challenges and dangers and called for sacrifice, he evoked an image of international community with America at its center which should have been the legacy of 9/11, instead of the Iraq War and relative American isolationism which have so richly rewarded Osama bin Laden’s efforts. This speech in Berlin marked a desire to change all of that, and to bring the world closer together. It showed that America can again become a respected world leader.

But from a different, more specific perspective, it was momentous in another way: it showed the kind of president Barack Obama can be and the kind of president John McCain cannot be. McCain might complain about the coverage Obama has been getting on this trip, but what he cannot deny is that Obama did it all, with no favors or favoritism from anyone else. McCain either couldn’t or, more likely, did not even try to make his past trips this momentous, he probably could not have generated the interest and focus, and imagining him up there in Germany giving that speech almost evokes an incredulous chuckle. But it comes back to the point: McCain never even tried. He didn’t think to do something like this, just like Bush did not do when he should have back in 2001. All he thinks of is stuff like visiting American cities named “Berlin” as a cheesy theatrical trick, while releasing increasingly negative ads and coming close to calling Obama a traitor who wants to lose the Iraq War. Compare that with Obama’s travels and his magnificent speech in Berlin, and McCain looks like a cheap, petty huckster compared to Obama’s statesman.

The media machine will have to work overtime to dispel this truth and prop up McCain as someone who somehow is a credible presidential candidate.

McCain’s flub about the Surge being responsible for the Anbar Awakening was bad enough, but wait until you hear his exquisitely contorted backpedaling on why he didn’t misspeak–it’s gotta be a prize-winner, for sure.

First of all, a surge is really a counterinsurgency strategy, and it’s made up of a number of components. And this counterinsurgency was initiated to some degree by Colonel McFarland in Anbar province relatively on his own. When I visited with him in December of 2006, he had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is a counterinsurgency. And he told me at that time that he believed that that strategy, which is, quote, the surge, part of the surge, would be successful. So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to carry out this counterinsurgency.

Prior to that, they had been going into places, killing people or not killing people, and then withdrawing. And the new counterinsurgency — surge — entailed clearing and holding, which Colonel McFarland had already started doing. And then of course later on there were additional troops, and General Petraeus has said that the surge would not have worked and the Anbar Awakening would not have taken place successfully if they hadn’t had an increase in the number of troops. So I’m not sure, frankly, that people really understand that a surge is part of a counterinsurgency strategy, which means going in, clearing, holding, building a better life, providing services to the people, and then clearly a part of that, an important part of it, was additional troops to help ensure the safety of the sheikhs, to regain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge continued to succeed, and that counterinsurgency.

Got that? The Surge™ really happened months before we ever heard of it, executed by General McFarland, who confided this secret Surge™ to John McCain personally; the “Surge™” is not a “surge” in the number of soldiers, which is what everyone, including President Bush, has been saying it was, instead it was short for “counterinSURGEncy,” which one can only suppose we WEREN’T doing until late 2006, and it was this special McCain-McFarland McSurge™ which was responsible for everything coming up McRoses™.

If that ain’t the most twisted, frakked-up, sorry-ass excuse for a cover-your-ass rationale to explain off a huge gaffe, then I don’t know what is.

Well, there was McCain just a few days ago claiming that he knew what Maliki and the Iraqis wanted better than Maliki and the Iraqis, and that their repeated statements about endorsing Obama’s withdrawal plan was just confusion as McCain knew what they really wanted, which was what McCain has been pushing for, of course. Silly Iraqis.

There is just so much wrong with McCain’s Surge™ obfuscation that it’s not funny. He claims the surge helped in Anbar, when the counterinsurgency actions he described took place primarily in Baghdad, and claims that the Surge™ was what protected the sheiks who started the Anbar Awakening, though the sheik most responsible for starting the Awakening, Abu Risha, was assassinated at the height of the Surge™ (the Surge™ we all know about, not the surge before the Surge™).

American MSM’s reaction: we’ll have to see, but I am guessing it will be the same old usual “nothing to see here!”

Obama is coming across as very presidential and right on all the important issues in Iraq; Bush is now courting Obama’s timeline while pretending not to, as Iraq’s leadership clearly shows preference for Obama’s withdrawal plans–and McCain is left to pretend to a gullible media that he knows better than the Iraqis what it is they want. McCain and Bush are shifting toward Obama’s long-held position that we should shift away from Iraq and toward Afghanistan.

And Obama does an excellent job stating that he is not “ignoring the generals” unless he does exactly what they say; the whole “following the generals” claptrap has always been Bush’s way of borrowing the brass’ credibility because he himself has none, as well as for passing the buck and shifting the blame. “I am following the generals’ advice” has always been an excuse and a dodge, not a virtue. Obama clarifies, saying that its the generals’ job to advise, but it’s the president’s job to see the greater scope of things and make the final decisions (you know, to be a “decider”)–and the generals then implement the strategy the president dictates. That’s how it’s actually supposed to work, not this “how dare you go against the generals” BS.

Meanwhile, McCain, in an interview with CBS News, made a much bigger gaffe than his previous statement suggesting that Iraq and Afghanistan Pakistan share a border. This time, he stated that the Surge™ was responsible for the “Anbar Awakening,” despite the fact that the Anbar Awakening happened four months before the Surge™ was even announced, and even longer before the troops started arriving. But McCain claims that the Anbar Awakening’s debt to the Surge™ is “just a matter of history.”

The cover-up: CBS broadcast the question, but edited out McCain’s gaffe reply (h/t to Tim), instead editing in a different answer to make it look like McCain wasn’t a blundering buffoon. What kind of news agency catches a presidential candidate in a huge, glaring gaffe and then edits it to make it look like he made no gaffe?? And this, the “liberal” CBS?

While we’re talking about the Surge™, let’s note one more time that the Surge’s™ “success” is accidental–they lucked out, big time, as not only the Anbar Awakening softened up the ground, but that the cease-fire called by al Sadr caused the resulting decrease in violence–and the Surge™ simply happened to start at a time when we could take advantage of these independent developments. It’s the classic “Homer” success–you make a move which by all rights should end in disaster, but then fate intervenes to bring you success. The Surge™ was not a success because of McCain’s brilliant planning, he just happened to luck out, big-time, as the confluence of events in Iraq made a bad decision into a good one purely by accident.

Not only did Maliki endorse Obama’s Iraq strategy if not Obama himself, not only was it not a mistranslation, not only has Maliki been saying the same basic thing for the past two weeks, not only did Maliki and his office repeat the endorsement of Obama’s plan after meeting with the candidate, but aside from all this, it looks like Maliki’s office approved of the original Spiegel interview in the first place, verifying that Spiegel’s translation was perfectly fine.

Not that it matters. The Liberal Media™ have the phoney-baloney “correction” from a Maliki staffer who was pressured by the U.S. into make a statement which, though nebulous, cast even the slightest shred of doubt about Maliki’s endorsement of a withdrawal of US troops by 2010. So, despite the overwhelming evidence that Maliki’s position is in support of Obama, the official view in the US media is that it “could have been” (read: was) a “mistranslation”–and most Americans, if asked, would probably report having received that impression. Which is all McCain needed to defuse what would otherwise have been an unmitigated disaster for his campaign–thanks to the complicity of the US media which, according to McCain, are “favoring” Obama.

John McCain said that he knows, better apparently than Maliki himself, what Maliki and the Iraqis want. Forget the multiple times Maliki has said he wants almost exactly what Obama is proposing. Forget the fact that Maliki has made a few more trips to Iraq than McCain and so maybe knows a bit more about what Iraq–not to mention Maliki himself–wants. No sirree, McCain has made so many PR jaunts to Iraq, has been babysat by enough G.I.s and has done enough P.R. photoshoots with Iraqi officials that he knows what Maliki and the Iraqis want better then they do themselves.

After all, he’s the expert: he knows that there’s a very hard struggle going on along the Iraqi-Pakistan border. I believe that will be the venue of his next Middle East trip, in fact.

Meanwhile, here’s a concise summary of how the media glosses over McCain’s “expertise.” After all, the man is solid–he never flip-flops.

Sometimes it is really easy to get depressed about how brazenly the media bias shows through, as if they’re not really trying to hide it any more. When the report came out from Spiegel about his support of Obama’s plan, there was virtual silence–it took hours for U.S. media outliets to start reporting on the story, despite the fact that the White House inadvertently sent out a media alert (intended to be only in-house) to all the major news services concerning the story.

And yet, media stories only started to come out in force when the U.S. government goaded a rather strange “correction” from the Maliki government. It is now common knowledge that the White House had to specifically prod the Iraqis to make the statement, and the fact that it was released through a U.S. military news outlet made that all too clear. The statement itself claimed a “mistranslation,” though the nature of such a mistranslation was never provided, and could have meant that the substance of Maliki’s statement was correct but some side details were incorrectly stated.

Never mind all that–when the U.S. media started playing the story in earnest, it was on the theme of “Maliki: Mistranslated?” rather than reporting his support for Obama’s plan. And now that he New York Times has the tape and has given their own translation, the media will almost certainly (a) have moved on, as a pro-Obama story holds little interest for the close dog race they desire, and/or (b) will focus on differing word choice between the two translations as if it confirmed a “mistranslation,” despite the fact that the NYT translations comes out with Maliki saying essentially the same thing.

Watching ABC News’ webcast last night was one example of coloring the story rather blatantly. They used the bogus “mistranslation” claim as they focus of the story and report it as something potentially bad for Obama, showing the large title “LOST IN TRANSLATION?” throughout the whole story.

This is a media which has forgiven Bush fifty or so Watergate-level scandals… a media which ignores dozens of McCain flip-flops, some being complete reversals within days or weeks, usually with juicy videotape to exemplify a blatant flip-flop… a media which has completely ignored the undeniable, fully-evidenced fact that John McCain is and has been for months in direct violation of campaign finance law, and that the Bush White House fired the only FEC commissioner with the guts to say anything about it… this is the media which ignores Phil Gramm calling Americans “whiners” but covers Obama’s “bitter” statement for months, which calls even the slightest policy shifts by Obama “flip flops” outright.

You know very well that had Maliki made a statement repudiating Obama’s plan, calling it a “mistake,” then we would now be in Day Two of a month-long media frenzy about how Obama doesn’t know from foreign policy. Instead, we have both McCain and Bush copying Obama’s foreign policy, adopting it themselves but calling it different names (I mean, really, “time horizon”? How dumb do you have to be to not see through that?), and yet the media pretty much ignores it–instead, we get ABC calling Bush’s Obama-mirroring timeline plan “exactly what Bush wanted,” as if that’s what Bush was trying for all along, and how it’s not what Obama has been pushing for more than a year now.

Like I said, it’s rather depressing. One can only imagine that on a level playing field, where both candidates accomplishments and embarrassments were given equal play, Obama would be ahead by double digits in every poll. That he’s still ahead at all in this media environment is nothing short of a miracle.

Naturally, this came out in the lefty blogs, and was virtually absent from the MSM sites for several hours:

Iraq Leader Maliki Supports Obama’s Withdrawal Plans

In an interview with SPIEGEL, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Barack Obama’s 16 timeframe for a withdrawal from Iraq is the right one.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports US presidential candidate Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months. When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded “as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned.” He then continued: “US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

This is a HUGE story; the Bush administration’s own man in charge of Iraq has voiced support for Obama’s plan, repudiating McCain, who said that he would honor Maliki’s wishes were he to ask for a withdrawal:

Well, if that scenario evolves than I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave because — if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world.

A McCain spokesman said as much just a few weeks ago:

John McCain has always been clear that American forces operate in Iraq only with the consent of that country’s democratically elected government.

So, that’s that, right? Maliki was elected, he supports Obama’s plan, and as McCain has also said that being on the ground in Iraq is the ultimate credibility, you can’t get much more credible than the Iraqi PM. Right? McCain? McCain?

“His domestic politics require him to be for us getting out,” said a senior McCain campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The military says ‘conditions based’ and Maliki said ‘conditions based’ yesterday in the joint statement with Bush. Regardless, voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders.”

Ah, I see. He’s just saying it to please the voters, but really he backs McCain, trust us!

Actually, the question here is, where is the MSM? Reluctant to print this breaking story for several hours, their coverage in print has been muted. This is a huge, major, ground-breaking blow to McCain and a big, unambiguous boost for Obama on a topic which is McCain’s strongest area, an area he’s been blasting Obama on relentlessly.

I just watched CNN’s top headlines: not a single mention of Maliki. They mentioned Obama in Afghanistan, but not this story. I also saw the start of their main political show, This Week in Politics, and their top story is the economy, no mention of Iraq. This is rather mind-boggling, even after factoring in the MSM’s willingness to shill for McCain.

Just last night, I was watching the web edition of ABC news, and they were playing the weaselly-worded “Time Horizon” as being a “victory for Bush,” as if it weren’t a plainly obvious and evasive way of saying “timetable” or “time line,” and effectively switching to Obama’s position while trying not to look like it.

And now, reports are coming out saying that Maliki was “misunderstood and mistranslated”; a Maliki spokesman said that Maliki’s statement had not been “as not conveyed accurately regarding the vision of Senator Barack Obama, U.S. presidential candidate, on the timeframe for U.S. forces withdrawal from Iraq,” and gave this incredibly nebulous statement:

Al-Dabbagh explained that Mr. al-Maliki confirmed the existence of an Iraqi vision stems from the reality with regard to Iraq security needs, as the positive developments of the security situation and the improvement witnessed in Iraqi cities makes the subject of U.S. forces’ withdrawal within prospects, horizons and timetables agreed upon and in the light of the continuing positive developments on the ground, and security that came within the Strategic Plan for Cooperation which was laid and developed by Mr. Maliki and President George Bush. The Iraqi government appreciates and values the efforts of all the friends who continue to support and supporting Iraqi security forces.

Al-Dabbagh underscored that the statements made by the head of the ministerial council (Prime Minister al-Maliki) or any of the members of the Iraqi government should not be understood as support to any U.S. presidential candidates.

Hmm… first of all, the source was the U.S. military’s press office, a strange place for the Iraqi PM’s office to release a statement. Second, I don’t see where the mistranslation could occur in a statement like this:

“SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

SPIEGEL: Is this an endorsement for the US presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background, ultimately have a better understanding of Iraq than war hero John McCain?

Maliki: Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems. Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans’ business. But it’s the business of Iraqis to say what they want. And that’s where the people and the government are in general agreement: The tenure of the coalition troops in Iraq should be limited.”

The spokesman quoted by the U.S. military site did not specify what the specific “mistranslation” error was, and we’ll probably get the direct text in the original language from Spiegel soon enough. At first glance, I would say that this is little more than emergency damage control–get a loyal flunky to make a statement that can then be used to give some sort of credible argument that what happened didn’t actually happen.

It will be interesting to see how this story develops. But one McCain ally seems to have it quintessentially boiled down to just a few words:

Via e-mail, a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, “We’re fucked.”

Americans are making less while working harder than ever, when they can find the work, that is. Bush’s tax cuts have gone mostly to the rich, and what scraps the middle and lower classes have been tossed have been wholly eaten up by other costs–just the price of gas alone has eaten up every non-gazillionaire tax cut, many times over. We’re hemorrhaging jobs, suffering from fuel-driven inflation, and Americans are hurting–bad.

So what does John McCain’s chief economic advisor have to say to Americans?

“You’re all whiners!! This isn’t a recession! You’re just imagining it!”

And sadly, that characterization is not an exaggeration:

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” Gramm was quoted as saying.

He goes on to say that the United States has “never been more dominant” and has “benefited greatly” from globalization.

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “Misery sells newspapers,” [Former Senator Phil] Gramm added. “Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day.”

If Americans were just reading about it in the newspaper, then things wouldn’t be so bad. The trouble is, most Americans are living this horror show of an economy. Perhaps Gramm, living large as he is, simply has no clue as to what actual Americans experience.

Now, the question has already come up: Obama caught hell for a full month or more for saying that some Americans are “bitter.” Now McCain’s top advisor has called all Americans “whiners” who don’t know what their own economic conditions are like.

Is this far enough from McCain that the media might actually give it some air time? Somehow I doubt it. But you can be certain of the fact that if an Obama surrogate had said this, it’s be “Breaking News” 24/7 for the next week or more.

The McCain Campaign reaction?

A McCain official said: “Phil Gramm’s comments are not representative of John McCain’s views.”

Um, then you shouldn’t be hiring this guy to be McCain’s chief economic advisor then, dude.

I just had to switch off the podcast for Hardball with Chris Matthews. It was, effectively, a McCain love orgy putting on airs of being even the slightest bit critical. They completely bought into the McCain party line, broadcast only his ad, and talked about Obama not in terms of whether or not he has “no new ideas” in energy, but rather about how McCain and the GOP should talk about it, as if there was no question about the assertion. Rather than discuss the two candidates’ plans, they simply claimed he was–as the GOP ad alleges–just against McCain’s ideas (the gas tax and offshore drilling), didn’t have any of his own, and that Obama was out to raise taxes. I kept waiting for them to get to the other side of the story, but they didn’t–they kept gushing the same crap, almost as if the McCain campaign had written the show’s script. They accepted the GOP claims completely uncritically.

They did not even come close to talking about the fact that McCain’s ideas on energy are almost all empty pandering, as if the “gas tax holiday” had not already been debunked as saving drivers literally pennies per day. They acted as if offshore drilling had not already been shown to be worthless in the present crisis–nor that McCain just a few months ago was saying exactly that. They did not mention that oil drilling off the coast would not show any returns for five years, would not fix the refining bottleneck which fuels higher gas prices, and would not even be a long-term fix, with oil production not even coming close to significant levels even after drilling was well underway.

Nor did they focus on the fact that Obama, not McCain, was in favor of overturning the Enron loophole, which could help slash oil prices, or that Obama was more likely to bring the Iraq War to a sooner close and that the extraction of American soldiers from the region could have an equally positive impact on oil prices (after all, our presence there has done wonders for oil prices already, don’t you think?). And never mind that Obama is much likelier to take alternate energy research far, far more seriously than McCain is.

No, Hardball was more interested in simply swallowing McCain’s steaming load of BS wholesale. The more I listen to the U.S. media cover this election, the more and more disgusted and faithless I become in their being recognizable in any way shape or form to actual journalists. And considering that I had a low opinion of them already, that’s saying a lot.

Josh Marshall has an excellent rundown on why McCain’s promise to balance the budget is an empty sham. Short version: he has no numbers because there is no way to draw up any plan–even a fuzzy, shoddy one–that could possibly achieve what he’s promising. So instead, he’s just saying that (a) he will cut wasteful spending which he won’t currently identify save for limited examples, (b) he will magically win the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, apparently using secret plans he will not reveal to us or even to the White House but they will work and save us money, and (c) the economy will have “reasonable growth,” apparently for no reason other than because McCain will magically imbue them with confidence despite all indicators to the contrary.

All this will happen despite the fact that McCain promises another layer of tax cuts mostly for wealthy people which will cost $3.6 trillion over the next ten years, and he promises to increase military spending.

Now, let’s see… cutting taxes significantly and mostly for wealthy people, growing the military, cutting waste, and promising to magically balance the budget… hmmm, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah! Every Republican presidential candidate for the past few generations!

And how has that worked out? Let’s see… Reagan: started massive deficits; Bush: continued massive deficits; Bush Jr.: after Democratic Clinton balanced the budget, Bush Jr. brought us back to massive deficits again. Did any of them cut waste? Not really–they tried to cut Medicare and other programs most Americans approve of and want, but certainly under the last Bush, who had the Congress doing whatever he wanted, waste exploded.

Essentially, we’ve seen exactly what these promises will bring. McCain would cut taxes, mostly for the wealthy (as he has laid out), and I don’t doubt that he’d increase military spending (as Obama probably will as well). He might even try to carry out his promise to veto pork, except that (a) there’s not nearly as much cuttable pork as he suggests (but somehow never fully identifies), and (b) Congress would probably override his vetoes anyway.

But as for balancing the budget? Forget it; the budget will simply explode even more; that’s pretty much a foregone conclusion. Even if he did everything he promised, he could never even come close to balancing. Especially if he did everything he promised, in fact. Even in McCain’s Super-Duper Magic-Pony 2013 Ultra Fantasy World™.

Last week, we saw CBS’ Bob Schieffer getting visibly upset when Wes Clark respectfully questioned McCain’s qualifications for president. This week, Schieffer seems to be tipping his pro-McCain hand even more:

Sen. KERRY: He said, you know, you can’t–I have to tell you, Bob, I just came back from the Middle East. I just met with the king of Saudi Arabia. I met with President Mubarak of Egypt. I met with others. You know what they said to me? They said, `You, America, have served up to Iran, Iraq on a platter.’ They are outraged by this sort of, you know, ineptitude of what has been done by those who decided it was smart to go into Iraq.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you one question here.

Sen. KERRY: And they have turned away–yeah.

SCHIEFFER: Before we–before–because we are going to talk about–are you now challenging Senator McCain’s integrity?

Go ahead, read the interview (PDF) and tell me how the hell Schieffer could possibly defend asking a question like that at a point in the discussion they were at? Kerry was clearly not talking about McCain’s integrity; Schieffer was baldly shilling for McCain, portraying Kerry’s statements as some kind of a vicious personal attack. Lots of stuff like that presents itself in the interview, such as introducing Kerry as a “big supporter” of Obama, but not opening his talk with his other guest–a McCain campaign co-chair–with the same note, a disparity which makes Kerry appear more biased. Even the topic of the whole interview–how Obama is “flip-flopping” on Iraq when he is in fact being consistent with what he’s been saying for a long time–betrays a good amount of pro-McCain bias.

This on the “liberal” CBS.

McCain throws a hissy-fit on his bus when a reporter has the temerity to ask him a pertinent question:

McCain bristled at the comments on "Face the Nation" last weekend by an Obama supporter, retired general Wesley Clark, who belittled the relevance of McCain’s wartime experience as a qualification for the Presidency.

"I think it’s up to Sen. Obama now not only to repudiate him but to cut him loose," McCain said.

McCain became visibly angry when I asked him to explain how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the Presidency.

"Please," he said, recoiling back in his seat in distaste at the very question.

McCain allies Sen. Lindsey Graham stepped in to rescue him. Graham expressed admiration for McCain’s stance on the treatment of detainees in US custody.

"That to me is a classic example of how his military experience helped him shape public policy in a way no other senator could have done,’’ Graham said.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, also traveling on the trip, expressed admiration for McCain’s wartime service as well.

McCain then collected himself and apologized for his initial reaction.

"I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences," he said, noting that he has huge admiration for the "heroes" who served with him in the POW camp and said the experience taught him to love the U.S. because he missed it so much.

"I am always reluctant to talk about these things," McCain said.

Um, yeah. The service he wrote his memoirs about, that he bases his campaign ads on, that he constantly makes opportunistic jokes about, and that he talks about all the time. That’s the thing he’s so “reluctant” to talk about.

Look at his campaign logo: see the military star? Even the Optima font is reminiscent of military style–it’s the font used on the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, for example. McCain’s campaign is based upon his military service, and upon playing it up, all the way up to the hilt. This latest round of tantrums about Clark is simply the latest salvo in this long-running military campaign.

And, oh yeah, didn’t he vote for torture, in yet another of his long list of flip-flops policy “evolutions”?

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?

Some are already calling it “Swift-boating,” which is a ludicrous charge. Swiftboating specifically refers to the slimy smear tactics taken against John Kerry in 2004, and requires several components: (1) people who served in the military and claimed to have served with the candidate or have some special knowledge of the candidate (2) making claims about having witnessed or otherwise having direct knowledge of specific events, and (3) saying that the candidate wasn’t heroic, or going so far as to denigrate the candidate, claiming he was cowardly, a liar, or worse.

So what did Wes Clark say?

Schieffer: Well you, you went so far as to say that you thought John McCain was, quote, and these are your words, “untested and untried,” And I must say I, I had to read that twice, because you’re talking about somebody who was a prisoner of war. He was a squadron commander of the largest squadron in the Navy. He’s been on the Senate Armed Services Committee for lo these many years. How can you say that John McCain is un- untested and untried? General?

Clark: Because in the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk. It’s a matter of gauging your opponents, and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in Air- in the Navy that he commanded, it wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, ‘I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it publicly.’ He hasn’t made those calls, Bob.

Schieffer: I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean-

Clark: Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be President.

Schieffer: Really?!

Clark: But Barack is not, he is not running on the fact that he has made these national security pronouncements. He’s running on his other strengths. He’s running on the strengths of character, on the strengths of his communication skills, on the strengths of his judgment. And those are qualities that we seek in our national leadership.

YouTube of the interview here.

Sorry, but this doesn’t even come close to swiftboating. Clark made no claim that he had special personal knowledge of McCain, did not say that he had witnessed anything McCain had done, and did not make disparaging statements about McCain–quite the opposite, he lauded him as a hero. He simply made an objective observation that nothing McCain had done qualified him for an executive position, that his wartime actions, while heroic, don’t translate into any qualifications for presidential office. That’s not swiftboating, and any claim–even the suggestion–is in itself an unfair attack against Wes Clark. Not swiftboating against Clark, just an unfair and unjust accusation.

The McCain campaign, however, sees a great opportunity here: they can play the victim, claim they’ve been unjustly maligned, embarrass Obama, trash Clark, all the time while playing up the “War Hero” card. It’s a huge win-win for them.

The irony here is that Clark did not say one bad thing about McCain’s war record–this is so obviously not swiftboating that the media should be playing it as McCain’s campaign trying to make hay out of it (which they have no trouble saying about Obama’s campaign in such situations). But as far as I can see, the media is totally buying into McCain’s narrative.

Another observation: the GOP is extremely fickle about how wartime service plays into a campaign. On a variation of IOKIYAR, it can be said that their attitude is, “YAWHOIYAR”–“You’re a War Hero Only If You’re a Republican.” A reader at Talking Points Memo lays it out accurately:

Continues to boggle my mind what a difference 4 years can make to the conservatives.

1996: Bob Dole is a war hero! Clinton is a draft dodger! WORSHIP THE WAR HERO!

2000: Forget the war! Ignore the potential Vietnam-era AWOL-ness of our candidate, and his complete lack of foreign policy knowledge! He’s got integrity!

2004: So what your candidate actually fought and was injured in the same war during which our candidate was so very much NOT AWOL! We mock his service and question the legitimacy of his injuries! Have a purple band-aid to wear at our convention!

2008: Only a certified war hero can lead this country! WORSHIP THE WAR HERO!

Apparently, McCain’s war service is completely untouchable. When it comes to Democrats and war service, not only is the matter not untouchable, it apparently requires touching. Gore served in Vietnam? Yeah, but he was a photographer, so he must have used family connections (despite an utter lack of evidence) and besides, he was a coward and yadda yadda yadda!“ Bush, meanwhile, was actually lauded for his ”military“ service, defended for his flight-suit antics, and was considered entirely cleared of any AWOL or draft-dodging actions simply because of the Dan Rather story, as if that completely erased the massive piles of evidence unrelated to that story. And forget about the right’s treatment of Kerry–that’s where the whole swiftboating thing came from.

But even dare to suggest that a Republican who served in war should not be able to fully translate his service into presidential authority, and you’ve crossed a line. You don’t even have to say one bad word about his record–you can even call him a hero–but suggest that what he did during the war is not the stuff of great presidents? Heretic!

On a disappointing note: Andrew Sullivan sees Clark’s words as swiftboating. For shame, Andrew; I know you’re not exactly one of the most objective voices out there, but I had more faith in your reasoning skills than this. Maybe he was so busy blogging every five minutes that he didn’t listen carefully enough.

Update: Sullivan seems to be saying that the offense was not in the actual claim made by Clark–which he admits is ”technically true“–but rather the tone of the statement. He cites a reader who points to Clark’s statement: ”Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,“ and says it is unacceptable even despite the fact that Clark was simply parroting Schieffer’s language. He further quotes another commenter who said that what Clark said was ”bad manners on Clark’s part, given the suffering McCain endured.“

I understand Sullivan’s reasoning here, but I simply can’t get behind it at all. Sullivan seems to have more of an issue with Schieffer than Clark, as it was Schieffer’s language that he claims set him off. Otherwise, Sullivan seems to be claiming that military service is completely off-limits here–which is a bogus claim to make, as McCain is mentioning his service and his years of torture all the time, as if they qualified him for the presidency. That alone makes an objective rebuttal fair game, unless you want to suggest that McCain can go around saying ”I was a hero! I was tortured for five years! That qualifies me for president!“ and Democrats aren’t allowed to touch it. Claiming that the wording they pointed out–even if the word’s were completely Clark’s–is denigrating to McCain is a highly subjective judgment, and goes way beyond the level of tempering wording than is reasonable.

I can only ascribe Sullivan’s reaction to his apparently congenital hatred and willingness to judge poorly anyone who was ever a Clinton supporter.

The latest drivel from Lieberman:

“I hope Barack Obama goes to Iraq,” Joseph Lieberman, an independent U.S. senator from Connecticut, said on the CBS program today. “And frankly I hope he changes his position. Because if we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do, for the last couple of years, today Iran and al-Qaeda would be in control of Iraq. It would be a terrible defeat for us and our allies in the Middle East and throughout the world.”

“If we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do”? Well, let’s go back a few more years, shall we? If we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do back in 2002, which is not to start a “dumb war,” then we wouldn’t be in Iraq right now. Yes, Saddam Hussein would probably still be in power, but face the facts: under Hussein, Iraq was a more stable and peaceful place. Al Qaeda never would have seen its ranks swell, we could have concentrated on Afghanistan, probably would have captured bin Laden long ago and beaten back the Taliban, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would not be dead, millions of Iraqis would not be refugees, Iran would not have any chance of influence in Iraq like they have now, there would be no civil war; as for the United States, we would not have 4113 dead American soldiers or tens of thousands wounded or so many suicides and broken lives, 150,000 or so American soldiers would be at home with their families, we would not have pissed away a few trillion dollars, and our reputation and influence in the world would be far, far stronger than it is now.

Yeah, Joe, let’s not listen to barack Obama.

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.

When a commenter came here to drop a quick stink bomb-and-plug to his site trashing Obama, I followed him back home, and tried to debate on the issue. The blogger simply pejoratively dismissed my arguments without offering anything of substance to explain the dismissal, but it nevertheless gave me a chance to work out some new ideas. One thing I reflected on was the sense of betrayal, as if Obama had suddenly demonstrated antagonism for civil rights in general, or even just the impression that Obama had made a policy shift at all.

My own conclusion is that Obama’s FISA decision was meaningless in terms of policy or effect, and was purely a calculated political movie for the sake of the election. The key comes in looking at the bill in the Senate: a vote to filibuster the new bill was defeated, 80-15. Just to filibuster would have required moving the votes of 25 senators. Defeating the bill would have taken another ten. A similar attempt to block telecom immunity lost in the Senate by about twenty votes.

Even for a powerful, influential, seated president, shifting that many votes in the Senate would be a virtual impossibility; for a newly-minted nominee, it would be simply impossible. Obama is not the messiah, nor is he a magician. If he were to lead a fight on the FISA bill, he would surely lose. And in an election year, to put up a fight and then lose it–most likely by a wide margin–while the other candidate wins and can claim the mantle of national security as a result, well, that would be bad. No matter how viscerally satisfying such a display would be for we who see this as a very important issue, such a battle could have a disastrous effect on the chances of our party top retake the White House. So those who are disappointed that Obama did not make a battle out of this are perhaps not seeing the big picture on this issue.

Still, that doesn’t explain why Obama doesn’t simply vote “no” and make a statement of principle more in alignment with what the netroots want to hear. One thing that should be kept in mind here is that such a stand would have no practical effect in our favor; his vote and his statement would be purely symbolic. There could, however, be a negative practical effect in that McCain could use this issue to beat him over the head. As I stated before, I truly doubt that McCain could make so much of this as to actually make a dent in the campaign, but it nevertheless could explain Obama’s thinking on the matter.

In the end, by saying what he did, Obama did not make official any policy shifts away from what we thought; he made a statement of his opposition to the telecom immunity, and what he said on other matters were either a matter of balancing pros and con, or were at best inferred policy statements, not solid, actual ones. Slippery, perhaps, but again, this is usual for election-year politics.

The point I am trying to make here is that this entire matter does not have to be a policy or principle betrayal by Obama, but instead nothing more than a calculated political move in an election year on an issue where the candidate was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t anyway, so he chose to be damned in a way that could help him get elected.

I still think that it was the wrong move, and he’ll probably wind up being hurt in fundraising more than he would have if McCain could use this against him. But like I said, it’s probably not the huge deal that many purists seem to be taking it as.

There’s very little to like here. I can’t explain why Obama is caving so completely on FISA. Simply put, this should not be happening; Obama has no really good reason to do this. He could even make an issue of fighting the current bill, stressing the importance of security in some parts of FISA, but railing against the complete sop to the Telecoms (for which, as you should know from reading this blog, I have no love for whatsoever).

Even if he fought against the immunity and lost, he would still be taking a popular stand. Let’s face it, few voters, especially the ones who would ever vote for Obama, really approve of Telecom immunity–the issue is either so obscure or removed from the idea of terrorist threats that few people are out there marching for the Telecoms to be given immunity. And frankly, I doubt that McCain could say “Obama’s weak on security because he failed to support making Telecoms immune from civil suits based on their violation of customers’ civil rights!” There’s just not much of a ring to that.

The worst Obama could have suffered was to have the Republicans able to say that he opposed the FISA bill altogether, and thus hurt national security, smearing him with the broader brush; in this sense, Telecom immunity is not a hot button issue, it’s a poison pill. And maybe this really is the key to it: maybe Obama, who is concerned about McCain hitting him on security issues, feels it necessary to cave on this in order to prevent those kinds of attacks. If that’s it, then it’s not a very smart move (in addition to being a weak move), as McCain will attack Obama on security no matter what, and having FISA to throw at him won’t make that much of a difference.

There is one half-way positive scenario for understanding this. Maybe Obama, in his wonkish and both-sides-of-the-aisle fashion, simply made calculations based upon considerations of each of the issues involved, and came to the conclusion that Telecom immunity simply wasn’t that big a fish in the overall picture. We do know that Obama tries to see all sides on most if not all issues, and takes opposing views into account–this could simply be the down side to that attribute. After all, if the man considered all sides and took opposing views seriously but then always came down on the liberal side, never compromising–well, that wouldn’t mean very much, would it? It would make such bipartisan consideration rather hollow. Perhaps this is the price we pay for someone willing to consider all sides of an issue: he may sometimes be swayed by the other side.

But then there’s the less positive scenario: maybe Obama really just doesn’t care about this. Maybe he genuinely believes that national security trumps civil rights. We tend not to see him that way because of his decision on the Iraq War, but more careful thinking would reveal that the two are not really related. Opposing a dumb war does not mean you value civil rights over security. Of course, there are Obama’s positions on civil rights, his insistence that the Constitution must be respected more than it is now. But there are shades and versions of this, and Obama might not be on the same page as many of us on these issue. I very much hope that this interpretation is not the right one.

Then there’s the “maybe he’s holding back” scenario, which some, including Keith Olbermann, seem to believe in. In this scenario, Obama is caving on the civil suits because he’s planning to go after the Telecoms on criminal grounds once he gets into office. However appealing this idea is, it does not feel right. Somehow I just don’t see a President Obama starting that kind of charge, unless he felt so strongly on the issue that it overrode all other considerations. But this whole idea simply smacks of a desperate desire to believe completely in the candidate, instead of a reasoned analysis. I hope it’s true, but I don’t expect it is. And it still would not really explain why not fighting against this FISA bill is a good idea.

In the end, we’re simply left with the fact that our candidate did something we didn’t like. And, let’s face it, it was bound to happen–and it will likely happen again. No surprises there. I don’t think Obama lost any votes here–even those passionately opposed to the FISA bill still see him as the best candidate. McCain is all the way for this bill, and so there’s no sense in pretending that this somehow puts Obama across a line. And Obama’s other good qualities did not simply vanish with this decision; he’s still the far-superior candidate.

But Obama might take a hit in vital areas, such as fundraising: the passionate support which has driven a lot of his fundraising probably got rained on pretty bad this week–just as Obama made official his decision to forego public financing, he also made a decision which could seriously hurt his ability to raise large amounts of cash from small donors. I kind of cringe a little when I read about people wondering how Obama is going to spend the hundreds of millions he’s going to raise. I hope the passion re-ignites, I hope he makes that tidal wave happen–but it’s not as sure a thing to me now as it once was.

A new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll has Bush at 23%. Not that this is surprising–frankly, I have always been amazed that Bush did not drop into the teens or lower, but then I have almost always had this impression of the man. But I thought that 29% was a kind of barrier, save for minor fluctuations–that Bush would have to molest a child on national television to get that die-hard core following to start disapproving of him. So 23% is kind of surprising.

But what is more surprising is that it’s the Times/Bloomberg poll. If you look at the history of that poll, for the last year or more, you’ll see what surprises me: it has almost always been one that has Bush’s highest ratings. It’s an outlier, but like Rasmussen, it’s a high-end outlier. Only once in the past year did it have numbers that were not on the high end of all the other polls taken at the same time.

So for this poll to have Bush at 23% is pretty stunning. It could, however, be a blip, an anomaly, as most other polls have Bush hovering around 29%. But it’s pretty clear that this is not great news for John McCain.

Especially since the same poll puts Obama ahead of McCain by 12 points, 49% to 37%. Obama scored even better with Barr and Nader included, ahead of McCain by 15 points, 48% to 33%.

Another indication that this might not be an outlier: a recent Newsweek poll put Obama ahead by 15 points, and at the time, everyone thought the poll was crazy.

Now, not quite so much.

I had to stop listening to the podcast for Meet the Press just now. Yes, some time ago, Barack Obama said that he would “aggressively pursue” talks with McCain to work out a system that was free of big money; the worst you could say is that he didn’t pursue it as aggressively as he suggested. That’s the worst you can honestly say about what he did. But his campaign financing is cleaner than McCain’s. Obama’s campaign is not riddled with lobbyists like McCain’s is. Obama has shut down federal lobbyists, PACs, and 527’s not only for his campaign but for his party as well, in a way that John McCain refuses to do. While he may have violated the letter of his pledge, he has more than upheld its spirit, and he has done nothing even remotely illegal–not even remotely reminiscent of corrupt.

On the other hand, as a matter of legal fact, John McCain is in direct violation of campaign finance law, on two counts. He took out a loan with public financing as collateral and then unilaterally pulled out of the system–both illegal acts. He. Broke. The. LAW. And with every dollar he spends, he continues to break the law.

And yet these yapping heads continue to rave on about how Obama is disgracing himself, and are not uttering a word about McCain’s continuing violation of the law. Instead they whine about how Obama is breaking an otherwise great system. A system that allows for millions in corporate, lobbyist, and special interest money to be spent on behalf of a candidate who is then beholden to them, spent in a way that allows them to do it anonymously and without accountability.

You want corruption? How’s this: The FEC, which is supposed to police campaign finance, has been hobbled because Bush wanted to nominate to the commission an absurdly partisan member, and the Republican Party has filibustered any other nominations until this partisan spoiler was approved; as a result, the FEC, without enough members to act, has been powerless to do anything.

Regardless of this, David Mason, the Republican chairman of the FEC, spoke out earlier this year, challenging McCain about both of his illegal acts–in essence announcing that McCain may not unilaterally withdraw from public financing and that his using public financing as collateral must be reviewed by the FEC. Now, that actually speaks well of the public financing system–that a Republican FEC chair takes his own party’s candidate to task.

However, Mason will never get that chance: Bush has fired him.

Now tell me about how public financing is not corrupt.

Obama is the clean one here. McCain is not only corrupt, he is literally and demonstrably criminal. That is not a partisan rant, not a legal theory–it is fact. So naturally, Obama is eviscerated in the media on campaign financing, while McCain is lauded.

People, I make a lot of satirical references to the “Liberal Media™” in this blog, but I mean this for real: the media is so biased in favor of McCain this election season that it is not even close to being funny. That this can happen–again–and not make a public stir is only evidence of how conventional wisdom is still dependent upon what the media is willing to accept. If the media doesn’t pick up on a story, it dies, and no amount of blogging can give it power.

In the meantime, McCain is pushing for further media consolidation, allowing fewer and fewer people to own more and more of the media–single ownership of television, radio, and newspapers in multiple markets.

Gee, I wonder why.