McCAIN CONFRONTS THE REALITY OF HIS VERY PUBLIC SENIOR MOMENT-- OR WAS IT JUST SOME NOT VERY STRAIGHT TALK?-- REGARDING STROLLING IRAQI NEIGHBORHOODS

60 Minutes should be interesting this week. McCain is on to talk about his outrageous claim of how safe it was to stroll through "certain neighborhoods in Iraq." The whole thing started out as just Mr. No-More-Straight-Talk-Express doing his bit for the Bush Regime propaganda happy talk about how much progress they've made in Iraq. But because McCain is prone to think that if he says something it must be right and he must defend it at all costs, and because he is a lot older than someone running for office ought to be and has been descending into senility, he got backed into an uncomfortable corner: having to prove Baghdad was indeed safe for a stroll.

So he packed up a couple of shills-- Arizona Congressman Rick "always under investigation" Renzi, Indiana wingnut Rep. Mike Pence, who will always be remembered cluelessly telling the American public that Baghdad's much-bombed al-Shorja Market was "just like a market in Indiana," and his little closeted Mini-Me (R-SC) who doesn't care where he is; he just likes to shop-- and headed off to Baghdad. He wasted a fortune in taxpayers' dollars on this botched propaganda endeavor-- not to mention needlessly endangering hundreds of American troops and Iraqi civilians-- just to prove the unprovable. Well, now he tells 60 Minutes that... "oops, my bad." He regrets his remarks but that "that's just life."


Is America being asked to stumble from a bumbling imbecile as chief executive who was too inexperienced to wipe his own butt to a doddering old codger too crusty and frozen in time to think straight? McCain says he's "happy, frankly, with the way I operate." Bush is pretty sure God told him to do everything he's done. I think we've had enough of Republicans for a good long time.



UPDATE: FRANK RICH TAKES A LITTLE STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE WITH McCAIN


Frank Rich is in best form in tomorrow's NY Times explaining why Lindsey is a loopy buffoon and how the whole p.r. stunt was McCain's Dukakis-in-the-Tank Photo Op. Although it was reported in the U.K. press, I don't recall any American news outlets telling us that "the day after Mr. McCain’s stroll... 21 of the Shorja market’s merchants and workers were ambushed and murdered."

The political press has stepped up its sotto voce deathwatch on the McCain presidential campaign ever since, a drumbeat enhanced by last week’s announcement of Mr. McCain’s third-place finish in the Republican field’s fund-raising sweepstakes. (He is scheduled to restate his commitment to the race on “60 Minutes” tonight.) But his campaign was sagging well before he went to Baghdad. In retrospect, his disastrous trip may be less significant as yet another downturn in a faltering presidential candidacy than as a turning point in hastening the inevitable American exit from Iraq.