Today's campaign skirmish started by the McCain campaign: Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer visited Syria a few months ago with the American Bar Association for a conference on the rule of law and met with Syrian oficials; he's also an informal advisor to the Obama campaign. This afternoon's McCain conference call featured Randy Scheunemann and Rudy Giuliani trying to convince reporters that this is a sign of Obama's inexperience. Not sure how that follows, but as Ben Smith points out, they did cut off a critical questioner, and Michael Goldfarb also lectured a reporter for asking a veepstakes question -- "That's not what we're talking about today!" The Obama campaign responded in kind a few hours later, noting that McCain met with Syrian President Hafez Assad at the height of his country's terrorist-sponsoring in 1984.
The media doesn't seem ready to spring at this one. Here's my question: Without Obama on vacation or an on-going Georgia-style foreign policy crisis that allows McCain to seize the headlines, can the McCain campaign make the press listen to what he's talking about today? The Kurtzer attack is pretty weak, politically and substantively, and now that Obama has responded to the celebrity attacks in kind it seems that narrative is weakening as well. It's conventional wisdom that McCain is going to try to spoil the coverage of Obama's veep roll-out, either with his own announcement or attacks like these. We'll likely see tomorrow if that tactic is successful. Judging from today's dueling, I doubt it will be.
--Tim Fernholz