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Tue 25 Mar 2008 03:06 PM

Whats Good for the GooseWhen candidates misspeak: McCain vs. ClintonBy Liz Cox Barrett

When should the campaign press cut a candidate some slack when he or she sayssomething (more than once) that is not true? Never is probably a good rule of thumb.

But when will the campaign press give a candidate said slack?

When the candidate is Sen. John McCain and the something said involves foreignpolicy, as MSNBCs Chuck Todd explained in this muchblogged-aboutexchange withTim Russert on Sundays Meet the Press (emphasis ours):

Russert: Chuck Todd, John McCain has been traveling in Europe and theMid-East, had some problems in Jordan. He talked about Al Qaeda beingtrained by the Iranians. Lindsey Graham who he was with and JoeLieberman tried to say to him Al Qaeda is Sunni, not trained by the ShiiteIranian government. Any citizen (or soldier) trying to figure out thecomplexity of Iraq needs to learn the diffference.

Does that kind of stumble hurt a McCain candidacy?

Todd: Whats odd about the stumble, is it a stumble or was it a talking

point that he had been using for actually a couple of weeks, over a week,where he was talking about sort of almost blurring [Al Qaeda and Iran]as one enemy? The question is, he truncated it to the point he ended upmisspeaking. The problem, of course, McCain has, he cant he doesntwant to make it so he forgot it for a minute. Because of the age issue, hecant look like hes having a senior moment. Instead hes better off goingahead and saying he misspoke. Even if hes dinged on the experiencestuff hes Mr. Experience, doesnt he know the difference? hes gotenough of that in the bank at least with the media he can get away withit. The irony, had either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama misspoke likethat it would have been on a running loop and it wouldve become a bigproblem for a couple of days for them.

A running loop like Sen. Clintons TuzlaGate is receiving today? Clinton, too,misspoke (more than once describing her trip to Tuzla, Bosnia twelve years ago asmore dramatic and dangerousSniper fire! Corkscrew landing!than it actuallywas). There is no escaping the ongoing dissection of TuzlaGate on TV today,complete with footage of Clinton-with-blonde-bob walking smilinglyand, by thelooks of it rather safelydown the tarmac in Tuzla.

Lets take a look at how The New York Times treated the two instances of candidatesmisspeaking, a repeated exaggeration by one and either a repeated serious erroror a repeated deceptive elision by the other.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_03/013394.phphttp://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/24/mccain/http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/24/mccain/http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_03/013394.phphttp://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/24/mccain/

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The headline on the McCain story last week, reported by Michael Cooper, set a he-said, she-said tone for the pieceMcCain Missteps on Iraq; Democrats Pouncewhich distinctly signals to the reader that, facts aside, this is mostly a partisandustup, one side saying one thing, the other side pouncing, nothing too serious tosee here. Indeed, someone from the Democratic National Committee is quoted in thepiece calling McCain wrong on Iraq once again, followed by a rebuttal from a

McCain campaign spokesperson questioning Democrats readiness on matters ofnational security. And that McCain had made similar comments about Iran trainingAl Qaeda in an interview with The Hugh Hewitt Show is reported as something thatthe Democrats noted, painting a straightforward fact with the patina ofpartisanship.

In the Times treatment today of TuzlaGate, there is no Clinton Missteps on Tuzla;Republicans Pounce. The pouncing here is done not by the other side neitherthe RNC nor the McCain or Obama camps have voices in the story but by the Timesreporters themselves (four of them who contributed to the article, studying Clintonspublic schedule from March 1996, interviewing other persons present on that Tuzlatrip, pressing the campaign for clarifications and triggering backpedaling.)

This is as it should be in cases like this. When a candidate says something that is notaccurateparticularly something that speaks to his or her main argument for runningthe candidate should be called on it and called to account for it. Whats good forthe goose is good for the gander.

McCain is running on his foreign policy credentials. Clinton is running on herreadiness on day one/commander-in-chief credentials. McCains questionable graspof the fundamentals in the Middle East (or, if you consider Todds even moredisturbing truncated talking point theory, his effort to purposely blur thesefundamentalsShiite, Sunni, Al Qaeda, Iranians, all the samein the minds of theAmerican electorate) is at least as urgent or pounce-worthy (dare I suggest moreso, particularly in light ofrecent developments?) as Clinton exaggerating an accountof a trip she took a dozen years ago. And by the way, which is it? Did McCain have asenior moment(s) or is he deliberately blurring two groups? Shouldnt reporterspush for a clarification ofthat?

Of the reporters who have copped to Todds the media will let McCain get away withitmentality, perhaps most disturbing was Susan Page ofUSA Todaywho on MSNBCwent so far as to offer a (feeble) excuse for McCain: Most Americans cant tell youthe difference between Sunnis and Shiites, either.

And its definitely going to stay that way which may be precisely what McCainwants if the people charged with informing most Americans continue to do theirjob selectively.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/us/politics/19mccain.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=mccain+and+iranians&st=nyt&oref=sloginhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/us/politics/25clinton.html?ref=politicshttp://opt/scribd/conversion/tmp/scratch6628/%20http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq26mar26,0,5020126.storyhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/us/politics/19mccain.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=mccain+and+iranians&st=nyt&oref=sloginhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/us/politics/25clinton.html?ref=politicshttp://opt/scribd/conversion/tmp/scratch6628/%20http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq26mar26,0,5020126.story