Good manners type class? Or shut up, peasant type class?
Okay, I promised myself I wasn’t going to take any more shots at McCain, but this is really pissing me off.
Backstory: at a rally in Cincinnati, one of the speakers who worked the crowd before McCain appeared was some bozo local talk show host named Bill Cunningham. He delivered the rhetorical equivalent of a typical Free Republic comment, with references to the Clinton News Network and Barack Hussein Obama. Meh.
Afterward, McCain sought out the press and distanced himself from the remarks. Apologized, even. The blogosphere is taking this as a sign of McCain’s classiness and good judgement. HotAir even wondered if this consititutes a Sister Souljah moment (as if McCain needs to juke left in ’08 the way Clinton needed to juke right in ’92!).
HEL-LO! McCain didn’t hear Cunningham speak. Leading with Cunningham’s remarks or pretending McCain was reacting to the specifics is pointless. When he apologized, McCain had no freaking idea what exactly Cunningham had said. All’s he knew was, some peasant had dared to speak ill of a Senator. And I quote:
“It’s my understanding that before I came in here a person who was on the program before I spoke made some disparaging remarks about my two colleagues in the Senate, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton,” he said. “I have repeatedly stated my respect for Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, that I will treat them with respect. I will call them ‘Senator.’ We will have a respectful debate, as I have said on hundreds of occasions. I regret any comments that may have been made about these two individuals who are honorable Americans.”
Bolding mine. It isn’t McCain’s lean to the left that’s pissing me off here (though it’s hard to escape the impression McCain thinks more highly of Hillary Clinton than he does of Mitt Romney). It’s the whole collegial atmosphere of the Senate thing.
This is why we so seldom elect one of these self-regarding bubble-headed jackasses to the presidency: they think a hell of a lot more highly of each other than they do the rest of us. How this became a blogospheric conversation about whether Obama’s middle name is a cheap shot…is a mystery to me.
Okay, no it’s not. We’re having that conversation because that’s the conversation the media wanted us to have. Happy now?
February 27, 2008 — 11:40 am
Comments: 27