Matthew Yglesias (July 22, 2008) - McCain's Gaffes (Politics)

a broader trend in his campaign toward people being unprepared

Gawd knows that's worked out well for us over the last seven years.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 22, 2008 11:18 AM

I always thought it was the tension between not giving a sh*t about the actual facts of any issue and momentarily forgetting the right wing lunatic spin on any issue -- sort of a non-cognitive dissonance.

Posted by El Cid | July 22, 2008 11:20 AM

"But it's not a personal issue with McCain, it's reflective of a broader trend in his campaign toward people being unprepared."

Enabler!

He himself is unprepared, too old, and a one-note Johnny.

Posted by Hedley Lamarr | July 22, 2008 11:23 AM

I think the best theory is that they have grown accustomed to the press covering for McCain and his campaign, so have put very little effort into these issues. I also think that is a mistake--I think all this is gradually eroding McCain's standing with his "base" (the media), and in turn that is seeping out in the form of increasingly skeptical coverage of his campaign. In that sense, I don't think the effects of McCain's gaffes and his campaign's lack of message discipline have to be as overt as this particular article to still cause damage.

Posted by DTM | July 22, 2008 11:24 AM

McCain is getting old. In fact, he has been really old for quite awhile. I'm not 60 yet, but I can see it, and I know that I'm not as quick mentally as I used to be 10 years ago. And, it's the wisdom of age that let's me tell you that wisdom ain't what it's cracked up to be.

McCain was as good as he was going to get in 2000 and he's just gotten staler and more desperate along with becoming more prone to confusions of all sort.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 22, 2008 11:26 AM

"it's not a personal issue with McCain"

Okay, Matt -- if you say so. We'll all be old someday (with any luck), so I don't want to be unnecessarily mean. But to my eyes, John McCain looks like someone whose wheels are moving a lot slower than they did even two years ago.

Posted by Ted | July 22, 2008 11:26 AM

McCain has never had to watch what he says. His friends in the press enjoyed hearing him bloviate, and I doubt if 1/10th of his mistakes (substantial and mere slips of the tongue) were reported in 2000.

Once you get used to speaking and thinking sloppily without consequence, it's hard to learn to do otherwise.

Posted by riffle | July 22, 2008 11:28 AM

The Steelers gaffe is the one that's really hard to overlook, IMO. We're talking about a story that McCain has told repeatedly, is about his time as a POW, and wrote about in his biography.

How does he misremember that? You want to say he didn't misremember, he just pandered? So he modified his POW history to pander to a local audience.

How that incident hasn't gotten more attention is just incredible.

Posted by Jake | July 22, 2008 11:32 AM

I read quite some time ago that McCain is not a hands-on manager. He apparently gives a broad guideline and leaves all of the heavy lifting to his staff, without ensuring continuity and vision. He simply isn't strong on follow-up. Additionally, he apparently does not provide clear guidelines for his top people, so there's always a bit of a turf war and communication problems.

IF this is true (and the floundering of his campaign seems to support it), then he is not in complete control of his staff and thus he's not fit to be president. It's another way he's like George W. Who knows, maybe he'll pick Romney as his V-P, and Mitt will end up being his Cheney?

Posted by LFC | July 22, 2008 11:33 AM

This reminds me of when Bush ran in 2000 with regard to his verbal tie-ups. The press, bloggers, supporters all gave him a pass saying Bush wasn't skilled at speaking in public. Well, we now know it was an indication of how muddled Bush's thinking is - and look where we are now. I fear the same goes for McCain, his gaffes indicate how McCain's muddled thought process works, or, in this case, I fear, don't work.

Posted by Michael | July 22, 2008 11:36 AM

El Cid:
Bingo!! Add in the fact that the TradMed used to be able to cover for him and they easily got away with it.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | July 22, 2008 11:36 AM

Europeans liked Benjamin Franklin, too, and it's a good thing they did.

Posted by ferd | July 22, 2008 11:37 AM

It goes way beyond the surrogates and such being unprepared. The wheels are off the republican party. They can't get traction on anything because they don't know what they believe anymore. The party is in total shambles.

Posted by norge | July 22, 2008 11:40 AM

As to McCain's gaffe's, some are important and some are not. Mixing up Sunni, Shiite, and AQ FOUR TIMES is important. Calling Putin the President of Germany is not.

Not knowing that the number of troops in Iraq is critical. Saying he'd talk to Petraeus about the situation Afghanistan while he only commanded troops in Iraq (and thus had nothing to do with Afghanistan) was also critical. I'll give him a pass on the Iraq-Pakistan border, though it was worth a bit of fun.

Also, saying we'd take the techniques learned in Iraq to Afghanistan is beyond a "gaffe", it illustrates a complete lack of understanding on McCain's part. The techniques used in Iraq were used to quell unrest in heavily urban areas, suppressing a low grade civil war among locals. Afghanistan is experiencing outside attacks in rural, mountainous areas. Maybe McCain thinks he can keep AQ and the Taliban bottled up in Pakistan by erecting 17' blast walls.

Posted by LFC | July 22, 2008 11:43 AM

You know, I keep feeling sorry for McCain, him being an old man and all. Then I think about what his presidency would look like. I hope he gets less than 10% of the vote.

Posted by Obama foreva | July 22, 2008 11:45 AM

They can't get traction on anything because they don't know what they believe anymore.

Bingo. Put aside the racism inherent in Nixon's Southern Strategy. They've lived with that so long they've become racists. But the support of torture, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the disembowelment of the 4th amendment all come off as ad hoc positions because a Republican president subscribed to them. It's real hard to come up with a reasonable rationale for a policy that accepts such horrible practices.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 22, 2008 11:48 AM

As to McCain's gaffe's, some are important and some are not. Mixing up Sunni, Shiite, and AQ FOUR TIMES is important.

Exactly, the problem isn't gaffes and misspeaking, which everybody does. It's the combination of ignorance and indifference about his supposed area of expertise that's the problem. McCain seems to genuinely believe that Iraq is just like France in 1944. All we have to do is drive out the bad guys and then we can start singing Mademoiselle from Armentières. He doesn't understand what a regular reader of NYT or Washington Post articles on Iraq does. But no one will call him on it because he's an expert on foreign affairs and national security. Who ya gonna believe? David Broder and Cokie Roberts? Or your own lyin' eyes?

Posted by Jim | July 22, 2008 11:55 AM

This is all Doris Kearns Goodwin's fault.

Virtually everyone within the DC beltway read her book on Lincoln and his advisors, Team of Rivals.

The message that Hillary Clinton and John McCain took away from it is that it doesn't matter if all your senior advisors hate each other and are constantly trying to stab each other in the back; in fact, that's a good thing: it means you're just like Abraham Lincoln.

Well, we saw how that worked out for Hillary, and now we're seeing how it works out for McCain; the one with her incoherent, absurd, and constantly changing campaign messaging; the other with his incompetent, inconsistent, and useless policy shop.

The funny thing is, I've read remarks by Obama in which he also praises the book; yet his inner circle is by all accounts exceptionally tight.

The important thing, I think, is to have advisors who differ strongly in their ideas, experience, and perspectives, but who are not actually each trying to carve little fiefdoms out of the campaign or the administration.

Hopefully we'll have a chance to see how Obama runs his White House, and how much Lincoln there is in it.

Posted by lampwick | July 22, 2008 11:55 AM

I always thought it was the tension between not giving a sh*t about the actual facts of any issue and momentarily forgetting the right wing lunatic spin on any issue -- sort of a non-cognitive dissonance.

Agree with El Cid. The Rovians are generally good campaigners because they know their wingnut talking points cold, even if they don't give a shit about the underlying policy. Perhaps more importantly, a good Rovian usually does give a shit about the underlying policy, even if it's for evil and malevolent purposes.

For McCain and many of his followers, there are simply huge swaths of policy that they (a.) don't care about and (b.) can't be bothered to remember the GOP talking points for. They literally have no opinion on the matter...and that leads to quite a bit of confusion when lobbyists tell them one thing to say while plain common sense suggests a more appropriate course.

Posted by owenz | July 22, 2008 12:01 PM

The techniques used in Iraq were used to quell unrest in heavily urban areas, suppressing a low grade civil war among locals. Afghanistan is experiencing outside attacks in rural, mountainous areas.

I'm no expert on the situation in Afghanistan, but there have been a bunch of suicide bombings in the major cities. The Indian embassy in Kandahar was attacked less than two weeks ago. There was a suicide bombing in Kabul in the last 24 hours.

This is only to say that there might be a few lessons the military could take from Iraq and apply in Afghanistan, not that McCain knows what he's talking about. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while.

Maybe it's more rhetorically effective to be simple-minded and blunt in an outright rejection of everything one's opponent says, but it bothers me a little. I'm a total concern troll, but I feel like I'm justified in worrying when my ideological allies play fast and loose with the truth.

Posted by Tyler Simons | July 22, 2008 12:12 PM

I think it's partially that the media has always given him a pass--but fundamentally, I think it's something deeper than this.

John McCain is just not a very serious politician. There's a reason he gets so much contempt from his peers in the Senate, and I'm sorry, it's not because he took them on in campaign finance (Russ Feingold is very respected).

He's been skating for years-first he was a machine guy who nobody really respected, but they didn't despise because, hey, he was a bit of a piker, but at least you knew what he was. And he was also a genuine goddam war hero, and funny as hell.

But then 2000 comes along. McCain says that in his 2000 race, he learned about all kinds of issues. Like, uh, health insurance costs. First off, how is it conceivable that a guy who was in the Senate in 1994 genuinely didn't notice our nation had a healthcare crisis. How much was he phoning it in?

And it appears that after 2000, when he had power, he used it to a shocking extent in a way that was capricious, motivated by personal spite/friendship, and really with no deep understanding of the issues or coherent policy.

An ideologue you can disagree with, but respect. A guy who puts empirical results before ideology, you can likewise respect, even if this makes him a less reliable vote. A deal broker, you can respect. A guy who focuses on building the party's power, you can respect this too. But a guy who doesn't know what the fuck is going on, but who doesn't hesitate to throw his weight around? Who the fuck respects that?

The reason for the gaffes is because McCain is in WAY over his head, and he doesn't realize it. The reason his campaign can't settle on positions is because that's the kind of political stuff that McCain sucks at (he is incredibly good at media, though). Unfortunately, it's also critical to governing. It's the same reason his budget is such a joke. His budget is a mess because he's not forcing his team to bring him tough choices, he just ants a fluff piece to get "out there".

Want to know why he can't use a teleprompter? Because he's not involved in his fucking speeches. Nobody who knows his mind is doing back-and-forths with the writers and about what has to be in his speeches, making him sign off on approach, reviewing drafts, etc. Remember when his team released excerpts from a speech, and then actually had to walk them back? McCain obviously hadn't fucking read it until it went out. This was a major policy speech, not a BS local issue.

McCain and his team's gaffes are because he's not properly staffed, and now that he's losing it's near-impossible to build that kind of thing. McCain simply has never made it a priority to have the kind of staff that knows how he thinks on the issues, that knows how to run policies through the traps, that is serious and focused. And that's because he's none of those things.

McCain is just in way over his head, and he's tap dancing. Spend enough concentrated hours with him, and even reporters will eventually figure this out.

Posted by anonymiss | July 22, 2008 12:14 PM

McCain is making these kind of errors, not because he's old necessarily, but because he's being forced to read off a script. And he's no good at it.

It's astonishing to think that a powerful politician could have gotten himself elected without the ability to read a speech, but that's exactly what Mr. McHero seems to have done.

Posted by Fleshmop | July 22, 2008 12:16 PM

We've seen Carly Fiorina not realize McCain disagrees with her about whether insurance companies should cover birth control

As was pointed out on the original thread about this topic, Matthew is lying (as is ThinkProgress).

Fiorina said that women should have a "choice" as to whether their plan covers birth control. McCain voted against a mandate. A choice is the opposite of a mandate; they aren't the same thing.

I know authoritarians like Matthew like government mandates. McCain prefers choice, as does Fiorina.

Posted by Al | July 22, 2008 12:16 PM

The techniques used in Iraq were used to quell unrest in heavily urban areas, suppressing a low grade civil war among locals. Afghanistan is experiencing outside attacks in rural, mountainous areas.

I'm no expert on the situation in Afghanistan, but there have been a bunch of suicide bombings in the major cities. The Indian embassy in Kandahar was attacked less than two weeks ago. There was a suicide bombing in Kabul in the last 24 hours.

This is only to say that there might be a few lessons the military could take from Iraq and apply in Afghanistan, not that McCain knows what he's talking about. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while.

Maybe it's more rhetorically effective to be simple-minded and blunt in an outright rejection of everything one's opponent says, but it bothers me a little. I'm a total concern troll, but I feel like I'm justified in worrying when my ideological allies play fast and loose with the truth.

Posted by Tyler Simons | July 22, 2008 12:16 PM

If he is getting old and losing his grip, constantly forgetting things etc he shouldn't be president. It's that simple. An old president isn't a bad thing, an old president who is losing his mental faculties is unacceptable and I don't this it's ageist to say that.

Posted by dwmr | July 22, 2008 12:19 PM

The funny thing here is how people like Matthew completely ignore the lengthy list of Obama gaffes. Obama doesn't know how many states are in the United States. Obama also doesn't know how many years he'd get to be President. These are basic civics facts that any third grader would know!

The only conclusion is that Obama is too much of a moron to be President.

Posted by Al | July 22, 2008 12:25 PM

lampwick,

I think you make a good point, but I would also note that I think some amount of internal dissent among smart people of varied experience is inevitable, and in fact desirable--dissent can be an important motivating factor for people, and setting up some internal competition among people with differing views can drive them to overperform.

But of course the amount of internal dissent an organization can handle depends heavily on the person at the top--a leader with a strong personality and good judgment will be better able to control the people lower in the organization, moderating the worse aspects of dissent and directing dissenting people into productive paths. And I do think the importance of Lincoln's individual abilities as a leader to making his approach work is something often missed. And of course even when not missed, too many people think they are a leader of Lincoln's caliber when in fact they are not.

Posted by DTM | July 22, 2008 12:27 PM

Always nice when more than one of the Als pay us a visit and speak a little bit past each other.

I like to think of it as a sort of conservative commenting guild... the Al continuum.

Posted by Freddie | July 22, 2008 12:31 PM

I think anonymiss gets it pretty much right. This has been my evolving view of McCain over the last few years. I used to be a fan back in 2000, but now I realize that it was always just a mirage. The man is deeply unserious, but has no clue what a fool he was. He didn't graduate at the bottom of his class accidentally. He isn't hated by the Republican party for his views. He's hated b/c he doesn't work within the party structure and b/c he's a loose cannon. It's nice that he screws up the Republicans, but let's not put the man in power. He is actively destructive.

Posted by mpowell | July 22, 2008 12:33 PM

Are they lazy? Are they arrogant? Understaffed? Have they just decided that these kind of mix-ups don't matter?

I think those are probably all true. Regardless of whether John McCain himself is old and senile, this problem seems to permeate the whole campaign, at every level.

A couple of months ago, I attended a panel session at a conference at which low-level wonky surrogates from the Obama, Clinton and McCain campaigns each gave presentations about what their candidates plan to do on science issues (R&D funding, science policy, etc). While Obama's guy, appropriately, stole the show, Clinton's representative was also smart, knowledgeable and prepared. The McCain surrogate by comparison (or even not by comparison) was utterly pathetic. He came across as dumb and bumbling and it generally seemed like this was the first time he had ever discussed or thought about these issues. Someone asked him how McCain could promise increased R&D funding given his larger plans for the federal budget, and he had to stop and think about it. Then he came back with the old chesnut that cutting taxes will stimulate the economy and lead to more federal revenue. It was embarrassing.

In all, the panel session was a perfect microcosm of the whole race. In my cynical heart of hearts, I don't really believe too many politicians really care about the issues, but McCain REALLY doesn't care. He doesn't even care about LOOKING like he cares. It's a campaign based on a cult of personality, and it's not much of a personality these days.

Posted by Jake H. | July 22, 2008 12:35 PM

But it's not a personal issue with McCain, it's reflective of a broader trend in his campaign toward people being unprepared.

Well, McCain is the boss, isn't he? Why do you think his campaign is such a mess?

I think McCain is a man who knows that he blew his one great shot in 2000, when he was at the top of his game. He's now over the hill, and he knows it. I don't even think he really wants to be president anymore, and his heart is only in the fight about 60% of the time. The rest of the time he rambles aimlessly in the listless, tired, "I don't give a shit, anymore" mode of the old man preparing to pass over to the other side.

My guess is that he never really expected to win the nomination. He's like an old veteran quarterback who dutifully signed a one-year extension to be take it easy as a backup, pull a check and tutor the young starter, because he's an old reliable part of the team. But the starter went down, and now here he is having to take dozens of snaps every day, put in a couple hours in the weight room, and take a pounding on Sundays.

I sometimes suspect McCain can barely suppress a self-destructive urge to commit a decisive, race-ending gaffe that will save him from the prospect of a four-year, energy-sapping nightmare at the helm in the most demanding job in the world, when he knows he's in no physical shape to handle it.

A candidate's campaign reflects the leadership of the candidate. McCain's campaign is an amateur hour operation because he's mailing it in.

Posted by Dan Kervick | July 22, 2008 12:39 PM

When Obama made the 57 states comment. He immediately corrected himself. He joked about it in a self-deprecating manner.

Posted by Micheline | July 22, 2008 12:41 PM

and speak a little bit past each other

Um, huh? I made two separate points, so I put them in two separate posts. I don't think it's that difficult to grasp.

Posted by Al | July 22, 2008 12:44 PM

I know authoritarians like Matthew like government mandates. McCain prefers choice, as does Fiorina.

McCain is so much in favor of choice he asks the subjects in Gitmo who are going to be tortured what temp they want the water.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 22, 2008 12:45 PM

I wasn't trying to make some clever insult saying that you're inconsistent. I'm saying there is literally more than one conservative Al who posts in this comments section. The only question is whether you guys are in cahoots.

Posted by Freddie | July 22, 2008 12:48 PM

I'm no expert on the situation in Afghanistan, but there have been a bunch of suicide bombings in the major cities.

Compared to what's happened in the countryside, it's nothing. Entire regions are being controlled by the Taliban. In the past few months, the Taliban attacked our soldiers and forced them to abandon their base, attacked a prison freeing 400 prisoners (i.e. Taliban soldiers), and took over a town (though we were able to push them out).

The military has said that we have enough troops to clear an area, but not "clear and hold". (And for the apologists, the concept of clear and hold was known long before we went into Iraq. No need to "learn" it there.)

Throw in the booming opium poppy crop that funds the Taliban, and you can see that our rural problems in Afghanistan are enormous. The suicide bombs in the cities are no picnic, but they are not nearly as structurally threatening.

Posted by LFC | July 22, 2008 12:56 PM

I'm saying there is literally more than one conservative Al who posts in this comments section.

Based upon what evidence?

Posted by Al | July 22, 2008 12:57 PM

its a couple of things.
first, as has been noted, he's so accustomed to just saying just about anything, and then having the press clean up after him that he's never developed the kind of discipline a "normal" candidate or public figure has to develop.
most candidates don't enjoy the benefit of hordes of reporters explaining what that person really meant, even though he may have said something quite different.
he's like a student whose teachers always overlooked glaring errors in his work because they liked him or because they saw something else really positive in the work itself.
he also understands that he can simply bully the press into not reporting on his gaffes, by any number of tactics. republicans may not be able to run or govern anything, but they are true masters when it comes to working the refs and making sure that the media works FOR them and not AGAINST them.
the controversey over media coverage of obama's trip is the latest greatest example. first they harangue obama into taking the trip. then they bully the media into reporting that the media is being unfair to mccain because they are reporting extensively on an unprecedented trip.
and the media dutifully begins a new narrative: that the media is favoring obama and they are being too soft on him.
such an argument is so contrary to actual events and facts - rev. wright...bitter americans, anyone? - that it is truly mindboggling that supposedly serious journalists even consider talking about it.
but the mccain campaign makes the argument, he makes it forcefully, in a bullying fashion and by the sheer force of their gall, he is successful.
his campaign does the same thing anytime anyone mentions any of the gaffes that he routinely makes.
i record and watch almost all of the news shows. i zip through most of them until i find something on the campaigns. i see, for better of worse, an incredible number of those somewhat insane talking head battles that cable specializes in.
without fail, if anyone mentions a mccain gaffe, one of his surrogates will launch into a blistering attack that usually puts anyone and everyone on their heels and that is the end of that discussion.
and typically, wimpy democratic surrogates don't want to engage in that level of discourse, so the issue goes away.
the strategy works.
mccain knows that he can get away with saying anything and not be held accountable, so he continues to do it.
it is really pretty simple.

Posted by frankie d | July 22, 2008 12:57 PM

Europeans liked Benjamin Franklin, too, and it's a good thing they did.

For the life of me, I don't understand why Obama does go all "Founding Fathers" more often on McCain and his advisers when responding to an attack. What's McCain going to do? Say that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington suck?

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | July 22, 2008 1:05 PM

In case anybody is just skimming this thread, I think anonymiss sums up McCain's MO very well upthread.

Posted by jonnybutter | July 22, 2008 1:09 PM

Yeah, anonymiss nailed it. Well done.

Posted by Dr. Victor Davis Handjob | July 22, 2008 1:18 PM

Yeah, anonymiss nailed it. Well done.

Posted by Dr. Victor Davis Handjob | July 22, 2008 1:18 PM

Yeah, anonymiss nailed it. Well done.

Posted by Dr. Victor Davis Handjob | July 22, 2008 1:19 PM

He swaps the green bay packers and Pittsburgh Steelers in stories NOW because it will confuse his interrogators. He doesn't realize those people putting microphones in his face are not North Vietnamese.

Posted by catclub | July 22, 2008 1:50 PM

Fiorina said that women should have a "choice" as to whether their plan covers birth control. McCain voted against a mandate. A choice is the opposite of a mandate; they aren't the same thing.

This is Malkinite nonsense. There is no choice for the woman if the plan doesn't cover birth control -- if you're getting it through your employer, you have a limited set of plans to pick through, all from the same provider. If you're not getting it from your employer, you're probably screwed anyway. If it is covered, you certainly have a choice: you get a prescription and either pay the co-pay and take the pills or you don't.

The point is to make sure birth control is covered by plans which cover Viagra. Twisting this into a semantic debate is intellectually dishonest and beneath you, Al. I know that you're deeply offended that somewhere, some (heck, probably all) women might possibly reject the idea that you could impregnate her at will and force her to have your child. You could at least be honest about it.

Posted by Shaz | July 22, 2008 1:53 PM

Is this really a trend of McCain surrogates being unprepared, or that they are fooled by McCain's maverick tag? A male maverick in the 21st century would fund Viagra AND birth control...wouldn't he? They assume he is a fiscal conservative who is socially pragmatic, but his record does not support that assumption.

Posted by BEmama | July 22, 2008 2:32 PM

Jeffry Davis But the support of torture, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the disembowelment of the 4th amendment all come off as ad hoc positions because a Republican president subscribed to them.

George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ were all Republicans gutting the 4th?

Who would have guessed!!

But then again, none of those men would have acted like Democrats today, who are obsessed with terrorist rights - and apparantly could have cared less if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a true torturer, the 9/11 mastermind & mass murderer, denier of any human rights extending to non-Muslims - ever went on trial.

Many of todays Democrats wish KSM was freed in order to punish Bush for violating KSM's constitutional liberties.

Posted by chris ford | July 22, 2008 3:10 PM

"Israel is a strong friend of Israel's." - Barack Obama

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/07/obama-wants-to.html

Posted by A New Fox News Fan | July 22, 2008 5:09 PM

As blog readers and news junkies, we spend 30 minutes to a couple hours a day on current events and public policy. Many of the people who work in D.C. and influence such things are still laboring off the fumes from the Hayek or Adam Smith they read and possibly misinterpreted in undergrad.

Posted by Mike | July 23, 2008 6:03 AM

chrs frd,

there are lots of "real" torturers in the world. I'd think (hope) you'd want to denounce them all.

And the sins of the past have been denounced. Here you get a chance to denounce the sins of the present. Are you going to decline the opportunity? Or do you turn a blind eye because it's a Republican president? (Actually, the whole "blind eye" thing is kaput. You know and we know you know.)

Many of todays Democrats wish KSM was freed in order to punish Bush for violating KSM's constitutional liberties.

Why not name them, then? You know, risk libeling them.

("Some" has a friend named "Many".)

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 23, 2008 10:20 AM

McCain's Gaffes

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