What a remarkably silly story. And it’s probably even sillier that I comment on it, knowing how silly it is, but the rhetoric out there is just amazing.  Wes Clark was on Face the Nation, often referred to as “that show that’s on Sunday mornings after you’ve already left the house to actual do something with your weekend,” and seems to have opened a bee’s nest of controversy by pointing out something rather innocuous and obvious:

TPM Election Central | Talking Points Memo | Obama Campaign Condemns Wes Clark’s Comments About McCain

But what did Clark actually say? In the course of arguing that military service alone doesn’t qualify you to be a commander in chief — a topic Clark himself knows something about — he said: “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

And of course, the McCain camp is shrieking like a teenage girl over the unfairness of it all!  Why, what could be better hands-on learning to be president than sitting in a tiger cage?  The only better thing I can think of is free-falling in a late-sixties model fighter plane.  That’s just like being president. . . sort of. . .

But what’s worse is lefties like those on TPM - both Josh Marshall and the myriad of commenters - who seem to want to insist that this is a cause for Obama to fight, that Obama’s disavowal of Wes’ comments is a capitulation of epic proportions.  I realize we’ve all spent ten years watching Democrats capitulate and we all hate it, but seriously folks, pick your battles.

Because there are just some subjects which are untouchable, injuries inflicted that are simply not within the range of polite talk.  I’ll do myself the favour of not itemizing that list here, but we all know topics for which there are no good ends, and this happens to be one of them.

Of course, Wes Clark is 100% right: the North Vietnamese probably did not give lessons on International Diplomacy or Macro-economics while John McCain was detained there.  They almost certainly did not debate the merits of ethanol nor the weight of scientific data supporting the theory of Global Warming.  They probably didn’t practice diplomatic table-seating protocols, town hall meeting debate styles or the intricacies of the Farm Bill.  He was in a prison, not a primer school for American politicians.  We may regard his heroism as a mark of character, but by itself, it is not a practical qualification for being president.

The fact remains, however, that the public will always rally around someone on whom the mantle of hero has been bestowed.  It is an indelible mark of character, even while the current opinion of the man can and does wane.  Such is as much a reflex of our own war-guilt - about all wars, in all times - as it is an expression of support for McCain, and probably more.  You can say it sucks, you can say it’s absurd, you can insist its irrelevant, but you cannot change it.  And just like Geraldine Ferraro stupidly defending herself on television after making her “Archie Bunker-esque” comments about Barack Obama, trying to swim against that current is folly.

The counter argument generally goes that by giving in to the scream-fest, Obama is codifying the unassailable nature of John McCain’s service as a qualification to be president.  Well, that’s true.  But that genie is long-since out of the bottle, now, thanks to Wes Clark’s small mistake and Bob Schieffer’s giant leap of hystrionics.  It’s not going back in because Obama chooses to fight upstream on Shit Creek.

No, as much as it pains me to see him do it, Barack Obama’s camp is doing the right thing: disavow early, let the steam run out of the story, and move on to the next thing.  Better to let this go now and let everybody get back to remembering McSame’s vision of the future.  And oh, by the way, fighting this battle isn’t something the Obama campaign is supposed to be doing: this is the kind of thing for his supporters to take up for him.

Hint, hint.

A while ago, there was a fair amount of information about John McCain’s funding troubles floating around. However, happily for McCain, the press was more interested in McCain’s alleged sexual promiscuity (ssssshhhivvver) with a young and pretty lobbyist. Now, the DNC plans to sue McCain over the issue, which is reported by Politico, but sadly without much information about the actual issue at hand. So, in case you missed it then or have subsequently forgotten about it now, I’ll throw you a primer after the link:

Jonathan Martin’s Blog: DNC to again file suit on McCain’s matching funds - Politico.com

Democrats hope to puncture a hole in McCain’s good government image by pressing the issue while Republicans dismiss it as totally groundless.

Way back when John McCain was the luckless loser of the Republican Primary contests, he was riding coach and struggling to pay for even the most meager of campaign advertising and rallying. In those days, he chose to dip into the matching funds account setup by the Federal Elections Commission that pays an equal share of funds for every dollar you raise, up to a point. But he didn’t use it like you’d think he’d use it. What he did was apply for a loan from a bank and apply for the matching funds program at the same time. He then told the bank that they could use the matching funds money as collateral if he wasn’t able to pay the bank back.

He got both the loan and the matching funds approval. You can’t do that. And once he got the loan, he declared that he no longer needed the matching funds, so he figured he’d just turn them down. You can do that either.

The real trouble for McCain is that offering something up as collateral implicitly means you own it. Either that, or it’s fraud. It wasn’t fraud, inasmuch as he did get approved for matching funds. So the only other option is that he acted as though he’d already accepted the money. Once you accept the matching fund money, you have to play by the matching fund rules, which include a miniscule and wholly inadequate cap on spending which would put McCain well out of the race.

Because the FCC is currently not completely staffed, there’s no one at the bridge to say whether there is or isn’t a violation here, officially. So it appears as though the DNC has chosen to sue McCain in court to get the same ruling. This is going to be interesting.

My favourite Rightie Poindexter, George Will, excoriates Republican presidential hopeful John McCain for one more subject on which he shows tremendous lack of understanding: the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus. Or for that matter, legal issues in general. Or for that matter, the pulse of the public, for whom the “activist judges” meme may or may not have every really resonated in the first place:

George F. Will - Contempt Of Courts - washingtonpost.com

Did McCain’s extravagant condemnation of the court’s habeas ruling result from his reading the 126 pages of opinions and dissents? More likely, some clever ignoramus convinced him that this decision could make the Supreme Court — meaning, which candidate would select the best judicial nominees — a campaign issue.

The decision, however, was 5 to 4. The nine justices are of varying quality, but there are not five fools or knaves. The question of the detainees’ — and the government’s — rights is a matter about which intelligent people of good will can differ.

Aw, hell. This isn’t going to go over well for McCain, is it?:

McCain In 2005: I “Totally” Support Bush On The “Transcendent Issues” (VIDEO) - Politics on The Huffington Post

But McCain’s case is complicated by his own words from just three years ago. In a June 2005 appearance on Meet The Press, the Senator told moderator Tim Russert that, far from being at odds with the White House, he had “been totally in agreement and support of President Bush” on “the transcendent issues.”

And the quote only picks up on the barest bit of what the video shows McCain saying. He goes on to outline what those “transcendent” issues of our time are, such as the War on Terror, Iraq, “Fiscal Conservatism,” and other gems the McCain camp wishes they could get back. As Josh Marshall recently said, “John McCain: I am viral video.”

Especially for those of you who appreciate history and the roots and moorings of culture, this exploration in TNR of Senator Jim Webb’s background and his route to his current political position is a must-read. Seems like the author, Eve Fairbanks, is quite the proponent of Jim Webb as Veep choice for the Obama presidency. The more I think about it, the more I’m liking the idea as well:

Mad Skills || The New Republic Online

Webb is supposed to be Obama’s opposite: the angry white politician to Obama’s mild-mannered black one. But, oddly, Webb has something fundamental in common with Obama. Both men felt ill at ease at elite schools, leading them to embark on quests to rediscover their ethnic identities in their twenties. Both deepened these discoveries through writing. And both came to their identities as outsiders–as admiring anthropologists of the identity rather than people for whom the identity was organic from birth. This explains why Webb can celebrate anger without succumbing to it. It also helps explain his appeal to Democrats. Like Obama, he is not simply a member of a group historically important to the party; he is someone who embodies that group, someone who has turned that group’s narrative into his own. Webb–who, in our interview, defended Obama against charges of cultural elitism made by people “trying to cut Barack down”–has shown appreciation for the similarity between their projects. “If [the Scots-Irish] could get at the same table as black America, you could change populist American politics,” he told Joe Scarborough last month, “because they have so much in common in terms of what they need out of government.”

The New York Times finally decided to get off it’s dead ass and start talking about a subject this website has been following for a week, now, courtesy of Wired.com news:

Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps - NYTimes.com

In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.

Wonder how quickly this one dies out? The rest of the article is primarily without substance, just a lot of quotations from people who are duty-bound to disagree with each other.

Now that Hillary is making plans to concede the Democratic Primary race on Saturday, there’s a lot of talk about how she should go about that - whether to simply suspend her campaign or end it outright.  Many people on the Obama side are clamoring for her to end it outright, fearing that she’s just laying in wait for some reason to turn her campaign engines back on again.

Well, suspending now wouldn’t leave much wiggle room for that type of thing, even if that’s what she’s considering.  But ending the campaign rather than suspending it is probably the worse choice for Barack Obama.  Because, of course, once she ends the campaign, all those delegates become free agents again.  They can fall in line with Obama or not.

And since there are likely to be die-hard Hillary fans and anti-Barack votes in their midst, it would make for a lot of unpleasantness if the Obama Campaign had to answer for every delegate who chose not to join his campaign when there is no other rival.  It’s not the kind of question he really wants to answer in the media, nor is it the kind of situation that’s going to breed much party unity.  All of this would be fodder for the Republican attack machine.  Better that Hillary concede the race, endorse Obama and quietly encourage her delegates to switch over to Obama if they want.  There’s nothing really wrong with delegates voting their conscience at the convention, as long as they accept the results and come together.

————–

There is also a fair amount of discussion about the role of the Super Delegates and whether that position should be eliminated from the Democratic Party’s primary process.  My view is that the Supers ultimately contributed very little to the race and thus the role is really the beauty contest prize we all thought it was.  Keep ‘em or get rid of ‘em, I don’t think it really matters.

It *was* Super Dels that put Barack Obama over the top.  However, that only happened once the elected delegates put him over the top.  In point of fact, Barack Obama won the Primary according to conventional count, and nothing short of a complete defection of Supers would have altered that outcome.  To put it another way, the only thing the Supers really contributed was four hundred extra votes in the “magic number.”  Instead of 2100+, the number could have been 1700+ and the results would have been the same.  The only time that the Supers *would* or *could* matter is in a primary at least as close as this one - and as it’s been deftly proven - in such a case the pols that are Supers would be entirely too fearful of negative reactions at home to bother declaring anything until the matter has been decided by the normal process.

So, here’s what I propose: keep the Super Delegates, but instead of getting an extra vote at the Convention, let’s just give them free car washes at Delta Sonic and nice, up-close seats at the Convention.

Jake Tapper provides a bit of insight into what might have caused the reportedly intense exchange between Joe Lieberman and Barack Obama. The bottom line: Obama stuck up for Lieberman once and Lieberman fed him to the dogs in favour of John McCain:

Obama Confronts Lieberman On McCain Advocacy, Tone, on Senate Floor || Political Punch

“It’s one thing to support McCain,” said one Democratic source, “but many think Uncle Joe has gone too far.”

Obama campaigned for Lieberman in 2006 when he was challenged (and ultimately defeated) in his primary race for his Senate seat. When Lieberman opted to run as an independent, Obama stayed out of the race, unlike other Democrats, such as Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who endorsed nominee Ned Lamont.

Wow, so much is going on today! But this one’s a real goodie, if you’ve missed it on TPM. Apparently, Obama and Lieberman got into rather an animated conversation on the floor of the Senate today. There’s some suggestion that the fact that Lieberman has chosen to go on the attack with the Republicans against Obama is not sitting well with the presumptive nominee:

Talking Points Memo | Conversation

While it was unclear what the two were discussing, the body language suggested that Obama was trying to convince Lieberman of something and his stance appeared slightly intimidating.

Using forceful, but not angry, hand gestures, Obama literally backed up Lieberman against the wall, leaned in very close at times, and appeared to be trying to dominate the conversation, as the two talked over each other in a few instances.

Well, it’s about time someone got in Lieb’s face. This could be about the campaign appearances or it could also have something to do with AIPAC, which is an alternative.

Should I even bother asking why this didn’t garner the mainstream media’s attention? McCain says he’ll support George Bush’s doctrine of Presidential War Powers trumping the Bill of Rights, and plans to continue with wiretapping Americans if he sees necessary:

McCain: I’d Spy on Americans Secretly, Too | Threat Level from Wired.com

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president’s wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

McCain’s new tack towards the Bush administration’s theory of executive power comes some 10 days after a McCain surrogate stated, incorrectly it seems, that the senator wanted hearings into telecom companies’ cooperation with President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, before he’d support giving those companies retroactive legal immunity.