Just think, if the democrats had a nominee by now they could be talking about this non-stop.

Republicans never make mistakes and Mr. Straight Talk never utters a falsehood.  Haven't you gotten the memo yet Mr. Crowley?

Not a gaffe.  A fundamental misunderstanding of the Middle East.  Genuinely frigtening.

Oh come on.  How is he supposed to keep all this stuff straight anyway?  The guy's like seventy years old.  I'm thirty years younger and I can't find my car keys half the time.  Iraq/Iran - they are only different by one letter, and they are right beside each other - this stuff is hard...

I like how he corrected himself - instead of saying 'Shiite extremists', he just said 'extremists'.  It's like "I know that someone is training in Iran, and they are extremists, but I'm not really sure who's extremists they are".  You can see the wheels spinning in his head - "How can it be Shiites in Iran, they are fighting al-Qaeda which is good, but I though Iran was bad,  wait they are bad - they have nukes, so the Shiites must be bad too, which means that al-Qaeda is good...I need a nap"

Yeah, too bad Hillary is spending so much time coming up with attacks on Obama that she lets this gem get away.  Nonstop nonsense all day on the news and from Hillary about Obama adopting a refrain from one of this campaign heads with that person's permission and not a peep about Mr. John "Master of Foreign Policy" McBain's inexcusable confusion between Sunni extremists and Shiite extremists while he is freakin visiting Iraq for heaven's sake!  You go girl!  You just keep on contributing to putting McBain in the White House!

One more thing...

Doesn't this remind you all of Gerald Ford's moment in the debate with Jimmy Carter when Ford said that Poland was not under communist domination?  Why is it that Republicans always seem to get away with uttering idiocies that very much reveal their lack of understanding of the issues?  Why are there loads of books containing such priceless stupid statements that Reagan and Bush have uttered in their political careers and none for Clinton or other Democrats?  Just goes to prove what I've said before:  Americans don't like their Presidents too smart or intellectual.  We like them a little dim and non-threatening.  

This is what teplukhin calls McCain's "laser focus" on the Middle East and national security issues.

A little focus would be enough for me.  I don't need the laser.

Iran is training extremists. Muqtada al-Sadr for starters.  He's studying in Qom to become an ayatollah, a position that would allow him to issue fatwas against the American presence. This is the same guy we have to negotiate with every six months for the Surge to work. This whole business is a house of cards, a temporary respite, and McCain hasn't a clue.

Um, Woland, I agree with you in general about republicans getting away with it, but didn't Ford lose that election?

McCain has faced no competition so far, if the Dems can settle this by June, there's no evidence this guy can even share a stage with Obama.

Woland makes a point I have repeated ad nauseam to whomever would listen. Americans prefer average Joes - meaning individuals who do not like to read, are easily swayed by popular opinions and do not use complex words in their speeches - over smart, Harvard Ph. D. types in the Oval Office. This whole country is, generally speaking, rather anti-intellectual and drawn to candidates who advocate going to war prior to collecting sensible information about historical and cultural conditions of countries that happen to be at odds with America. Hence the idea that Republicans are tougher and Democrats pussies (witness Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a fag or Mitt Romney being ridiculed for saying he would advise with his lawyers before launching attacks abroad - a position like many others that he quickly recanted). Hence the incomprehensible notion back in 2004 that a man who fought in Vietnam was somehow less masculine next to a draft dodger. Hence the fondness for McCain who, for all his integrity and honor, understands pitifully little of the Middle Eastern situation. The shoot-first-ask-questions-later mindset is alive, well and always useful in helping ignore the basic idiocy of the many of GOP members.

I had to laugh at comments posted roidubouloi. I am with you. McCain needs some sharpening. And Democrats need to harp on him for the gaffe. Nevermind the fact that we do not have a nominee yet. Howard Dean, where art thou?

haha, roid. Touche.

It's indeed troubling, and part of a pattern. When McCain doesn't get enough rest, he makes colossal gaffes like this. I met him in San Jose last summer, at the absolute nadir of his campaign, and it was obvious he'd not had any sleep the preceding 24 or 48 hours. He confused India with Indonesia and used "Iraqi" to describe the language spoken in Iraq.

Which is to say his health is probably worse than he's letting on. Oh well, I guess we're stuck with the Vapor-monger. Heaven help us all.

"Just think, if the democrats had a nominee by now they could be talking about this non-stop."

This is true. It's also true, though, that if the Liberal Media had the same gotcha hard-on for McCain that it does for Clintobama, this would be a lot bigger deal. Sadly, the Liberal Media merely has a hard-on for McCain.

On the other hand, mmathog makes a good point too. McCain isn't going to get any younger between now and June. And by the time the GE debates roll around, he may be in a hospital bed, just as a precaution of course. He can whisper his answers to Lieberman, who'll be sitting there feeding him soup.

I'd bet euros to donuts that McCain has a serious undisclosed ailment.

drdannyu, aeromonas/walto, sullydog - what say our resident medics?

He may be dead by November but if Obama is the candidate for the Dumbocrats he will still get my vote.  

Well, SNL tore into McCain last Saturday and while the skit was pretty funny, it also seemed painfully truthful.

Conflating violence in Iraq with Al Qaeda and Iran is intentional.  That Al Qaeda is Sunni and Iran is Shia, or that Iraq's majority government is Shia and Iran is Shia, doesn't fit the program

"I'd bet euros to donuts that McCain has a serious undisclosed ailment."

Age, amongst others.  There are people who remain high-functioning for many years after their 70th birthday (Hans Bethe and Ernst Mayr come to mind - both still publishing credible academic papers in their 90s), but they are rare.  Even rarer are people in this age group who retain the stamina and resistance to stress that people have in their middle years.

It is utterly foolish that this country would consider putting a man of McCain's years (not easy years, either, altogether) in this position.  Not because he is demonstrably incapable, or ill, but because the odds that he will suffer diminished ability to function under stress are just too damned high to be worth risking.

A gerontological nurse friend told me repeatedly in the second Reagan administration that the man had early Alzheimer's, and would be out of commission within 24 months of the end of his presidency.  She didn't miss by much.   Do we really want another person who may literally be losing their mental capacity on a measurable ongoing basis in charge?

John McCain can't tell Sunnis from Shiites. Do we want this man running a War on Terra?  It makes Hillary's argument that only she is better than McCain on foreign policy (?!?) seem even weaker and more unnecessary than ever.

John McCain doesn't understand economics.  He does not understand the countries that he wants us to occupy.  What exactly qualifies him to be POTUS?  Seniority?

God Lord, if there's going to be a war on Terra, Bill Pullman would be my choice for President.

I see it this way.  McCain hasn't got the mean-spiritedness and venom to exploit race himself in the GE.  However, there will be plenty of people in or close to his campaign who do, and will.  Nevertheless, there is a new kind of danger.  Obama is not John Kerry and this isn't 2004, and a spiral of suggestively racial attack ads could have the blow-back effect of creating sympathy for Obama, especially if Obama starts to look really good on the issues and McCain proceeds to fumble.  Kerry invited some of the ads by his own fumbling, and Obama has fumbled, but insane crap on the lines of "John Kerry wounded himself in order to get his Purple Hearts" is going to be very difficult to play against Obama.  I think that the number of people in the country who regret voting for Bush in 2004 is larger than we might think.  They don't want to repeat the mistake.

When it comes to pragmatic solutions for the major problems of the day, McCain's difficulty is going to be the fact that all Republican "solutions" (or at least the bromides that make the base happy) are so much hogwash.  We need Democratic solutions, or at least we need solutions that come closer to where the Dems are at in their thinking on science, foreign-policy, immigration reform, etc.  In a way, McCain could win but only if he replaces the bs he's been talking with intelligent content, to steal Dem content away from them as, say, Bill Clinton stole conservative content and tweaked it.  Also, Obama has a weakness on national security, because the Dems have still failed to completely wrench that theme away from the loons, and at some point Obama will just have to do it, as it's the only area McCain can talk about where he has the remotest chance of making sense.  If he's careful about mixing up stuff, he's going to sound more expert, and more authentic.

So Obama's problem will be not so much the race-baiting ads -- they might even work to his advantage -- but convincing people that he has a vision for the future that looks at the world realistically, including facing some ugly and complicated stuff.  He's got to take national security out of McCain's and the Republicans' hands, and then look like he knows what to do with it.

come on people, don't underestimate McCain or the Republicans. If they managed to get Bush re-elected then they can get anybody elected.

As to his governing, the next few years will be a disaster economically regardless of who is President. The standard of living of most Americans will continue to sink, and the country as a whole will get poorer. In fact, there will be a steady decline vis a vis the rest of the world and within America for the next 10 to 15 years, at which time the economy will then begin another sharp upward spiral.

Bush is smarter than McCain, although McCain's more liberal and less ideological.

"In fact, there will be a steady decline vis a vis the rest of the world and within America for the next 10 to 15 years..."

Right, so if you agree with this, why would anyone select 'hegemony forever!' candidate McCain?

I don't agree with the declinist thesis. I've heard enough declinism to last one lifetime, thanks. China's a  fragile and brittle empire that, like all huge, paranoid and authoritarian empires, is much more vulnerable than it appears. Anne Applebaum did a nice number on them last week in Slate. Putin's Russia is an africanized, kleptocratic shambles of a state riding a commodity wave. India has  800 million desperately poor, illiterate or semi-literate people. The Europeans are struggling with all the same demographic challenges, dwindling IT and engineering resource problems, and globalization challenges to their manufacturing base that we are, and not doing any better overall.

The point is, we have huge problems, but so does the ROTW. The big difference is that we're extremely flexible and adapatable, and we have a high culture that for the last 30+ years has been addressing our many challenges and offering solutions. What's missing is strong leadership.

IF we get focused, tough, no-BS leadership, we will emerge stronger from this crisis, just as we did after the LTCM debacle, after the S&L crisis, the 1987 crash, the stagflation of the 1970s etc.

But it all depends on leadership that can tell Americans some hard truths,

Nice job refuting the declinists/determinists there, tep.

Would you be willing to debate Jared Fuckin' Diamond on that point?

"IF we get focused, tough, no-BS leadership, we will emerge stronger from this crisis, just as we did after the LTCM debacle, after the S&L crisis, the 1987 crash, the stagflation of the 1970s etc."

That's a big 'if,' as you seem to acknowledge, and it'll depend more on our institutions and politics than anything else, feels about 50/50 to me.

By the way, our current problems are considerably greater than the ones you listed above, that said, I agree we are diverse, dynamic, still have good institutions and possess and assload of human capital and solid infrastructure.

"But it all depends on leadership that can tell Americans some hard truths,"

Well, isn't that the rub? No one agrees on what these 'hard truths' are. To me, the 'hard truths' are declining fossil fuels and a society (mis) organized around them (and real environmental dangers), to others these 'hard truths' are brown muslims coming to kill us all, while others feel that the 'hard truths' constitute 'declining moral values' that have 'harmed the family' and caused our society to slip into a state of sodom and gemorrah. I'm sure there are many others.

(I liked the last French election because everyone there seemed to agree that the 'hard truths' were a stagnant labor economy and handling rising immigration/integration.)

Which of these 'hard truths' are the 'correct' hard truths Tep?

Be careful, you're going to start sounding like Mike Bloomberg.

hog - I think the economic meltdown has put our national mindset a lot closer to consensus a la francaise than we were a year ago. Pretty obvious that stagflation is the #1 menace to the broad US middle/working classes now. I think that trumps Iraq, wardrobe malfunctions, immigration and just about everything else, and will continue to do so for at least another four quarters.

caagies - bring him on.

"Pretty obvious that stagflation is the #1 menace to the broad US middle/working classes now."

Maybe there's a consensus around 'the economy' (which means different things to different people) is the 'issue to confront...' maybe, (I'm not willing to concede that completely).

And even if that were the consensus, there's huge disagreement on what is important to fix it. Take you and I for instance, we're both largely 'reality based' voters, both 'democrats,' both believe in capitalism, yet you seem to think that keeping (at least most of) Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy is critical, and I think getting rid of (at least most of them) is critical.

See? Even WE can't agree, in spite of our basic similarities. You seem to occasionally think of yourself as some kind of representative agent, I have my doubts, and I'm pretty certain I'm not.