Wednesday Morning: McCain's Gaffes, Obama in the Holy Land, and Novak Punk'd

Good day.

John McCain can't catch a break this week. He seemed to be getting some traction criticizing Barack Obama's original opposition to the troop surge in Iraq (and continued tepidness about how much of the progress there can be attributed to the surge). Katie Couric's tough interview with Obama on the subject last night could have provided McCain with another opportunity to draw a distinction on Iraq strategy:

OBAMA: Katie, as ... you've asked me three different times, and I have said repeatedly that there is no doubt that our troops helped to reduce violence. There's no doubt. ...

COURIC: I really don't mean to belabor this, Senator, because I'm really, I'm trying ... to figure out your position. Do you think the level of security in Iraq would exist today without the surge?

OBAMA: Katie, I have no idea what would have happened had we applied my approach, which was to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation. So this is all hypotheticals

But any news that questioning may have generated was drowned out when (apparently unnoticed by CBS, as it was edited out of the version of the interview that aired), McCain messed up a key element of the surge timeline in his own Couric interview. The Obama campaign noticed. (So did Keith Olbermann.) Via the AP:

"Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening," McCain said, referring to the U.S.-backed revolt of Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida in Anbar province. "I mean, that's just a matter of history."

The problem with McCain's statement -- as Obama's campaign quickly noted -- was that the awakening got under way before President Bush announced in January 2007 his decision to flood Iraq with tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to help combat violence.

This gaffe comes hot on the heels of two other recent and much-publicized McCain errors: dual references to Czechoslovakia, which ceased to exist in 1993, and his mention of the "Iraq-Pakistan border" (they don't share one...he meant Afghanistan-Pakistan) on Good Morning America earlier this week. As the errors add up, the WP's Howard Kurtz wonders if McCain's age has anything to do with it. McCain's staff says no:

Aides to the Arizona senator dismiss the missteps as meaningless, noting that their man is far more accessible to journalists than Obama. "When you engage with reporters from 8:30 a.m. till 8 at night, you're bound to make a gaffe," says McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker. "People are yearning for the kind of president who takes tough questions, and that's who John McCain is."

McCain has chosen to stick with a foreign policy message -- his perceived strength -- this week despite a spate of recent polls suggesting that voters are primarily interested in the economy. But his string of errors is not bringing him the kind of news coverage he might have hoped for to counterbalance his opponent's news blitz from abroad. And Gary Trudeau isn't going easy on him either.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, continues his foreign swing. He's in Israel and the West Bank today, receiving warm receptions from a variety of Israeli politicians (President Shimon Peres told Obama he found a "moving humanity" in Obama's books) and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, and vowing to prioritize the Isreali-Palestinian peace process if he's elected. He also paid a visit to the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial and the embattled Israeli city of Sderot. And he had a gaffe of his own, telling reporters yesterday that "Israel is a strong friend of Israel's" (um...duh).

And finally...yesterday, columnist Robert Novak reported that a well-connected McCain aide told him McCain was close to announcing his Veep pick. Now it seems it may have all been a ruse. Geez, if you can't trust high-level anonymous sources, who can you trust these days?

-- Evie Stone

10:00 AM ET | 07-23-2008 | permalink

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