×
McCain deserves real credit for staging a public intervention against the partisanship of his own base. But it's not an easy position he's in. If his vice president is going to continue telling audiences that Obama sees "America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who would bomb their own country," and if McCain is going to continue funding ads that say "Obama worked with [a] domestic terrorist," then the occasional calming word during a townhall is a tinny counterweight. When McCain's supporters call Obama a danger, they're drawing the only logical conclusion from their candidate's rhetoric. A president who supports terrorist attacks against this country would indeed be a danger. That McCain makes that case, then tries to calm the firestorm by saying Obama is a "decent man" is unlikely to change their minds. They'll just believe him to be bowing to the pressures of the liberal media. McCain should either end the rhetoric producing these fears or accept his role as the instigator. But he cannot be both the cause of, and solution to, the problem. Meanwhile, Brian Beutler notices something very odd in Mark Halperin's transcript of the above video. Watch the final question. The woman says to McCain, quite intelligibly, that she cannot trust Obama because he is "an Arab." And that's originally how Halperin reported the clip:
"[A] woman calls Obama 'an Arab,' McCain interrupts to say: 'No, ma’am. He is a decent family man, citizen.'"Later, however, he changed his post to read:
"After a woman calls Obama 'an Arab terrorist' McCain interrupts to say: 'No, ma’am. He is a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements.'"Emphasis mine. The audio is very clear. The woman does not say "terrorist." Unless Halperin has another audio source where the word "terrorist" is used, he owes his readers an explanation for the insertion.
