Pots, Kettles, and the Washington Post

Although unsigned, the Washington Post's editorial about Gen. Clark's comments about McCain got off to a decent... first paragraph. Then this:

Casting guilt by surrogate association is a bipartisan affliction, so ours is a nonpartisan lament: Cut it out! The Clark blooper is no more revealing than was the Charles R. Black Jr. pseudo-outrage or the James A. Johnson ersatz scandal. What Gen. Clark had to say - that Sen. John McCain's military experience was not "a qualification to be president" -- was stupid, substantively and politically.

Except Gen. Clark did not say anything of the sort.

Moderator Bob Schieffer, who raised the issue by citing similar remarks Clark has made previously, noted that Obama hadn't had those experiences nor had he ridden in a fighter plane and been shot down. "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," Clark replied.

So the Washington Post's attack on Clark is a fabrication - a smear - and the author doesn't have the courage to sign his name to it. Go figure.

By the same token, there's also no reason to believe that Gen. Clark's blunder has anything to do with Mr. Obama's fitness for the presidency. Had Mr. Obama not immediately repudiated the comments, that would be noteworthy. Under the circumstances, we find it hard to understand why this was even a one-day story.

Could it be... because reporters and pundits who are dishonest, inept, or both keep mischaracterizing Gen. Clark's comment? Really - could it?

The Post suggests that the Obama campaign may have been behind the remark:

If Sen. Barack Obama's campaign somehow whispered in Gen. Clark's ear to adopt this approach, the campaign has obviously been taken over by people other than the smooth crew that helped Mr. Obama win the Democratic nomination.

Is there any basis for that innuedo? If not, why compund the sin of misrepresenting Gen. Clark's comment by breathing life into baseless innuendo?
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Update: Giving credit where credit is due, Maureen Dowd remembers the 2000 campaign:

When McCain zoomed in the New Hampshire polls in 2000, W.’s supporters insinuated that McCain’s years in Vietcong dungeons, including two suicide attempts, left him with snakes in his head.

Now McCain is trying to magnify the words of Obama surrogates on Vietnam to tarnish his self-styled postpartisan rival as partisan. On the way to Colombia, he talked about Clark and said it was time for Obama to “cut him loose.”

Yet McCain himself has joked: “It doesn’t take a lot of talent to get shot down. I was able to intercept a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane.”

Faux Outrage

CJR gets it about right, in relation to the McCain camp's whining about Gen. Clark's "attack" on McCain's war record:

The McCain camp, sensing an opportunity, complained that Clark had “attacked John McCain’s military service record.” Of course, Clark had done nothing of the kind. He had questioned the relevance of McCain’s combat experience as a qualification to be president of the United States. This is a distinction that you’d expect any reasonably intelligent nine-year old to be able to grasp.

* * *

It’s crucially important that we have a political debate in this country that’s at least sophisticated enough to be able to handle the following rather basic idea: Arguing that a person’s record of military service is not a qualification for the presidency does not constitute “attacking” their military credentials; nor can it be described as invoking their military service against them, or as denying their record of war heroism.

That’s not a very high bar for sophistication. But right now it’s one the press isn’t capable of clearing.

And how's this for a "pots and kettles" moment:

If that’s the kind of campaign that Sen. Obama and his surrogates and his supporters want to engage I understand that, but it doesn’t reduce the price of gallon of gas by one penny. It doesn’t achieve energy independence [or in the midst of a foreclosure crisis] help an American stay in their home.

That sort of negative campaign rhetoric does precisely... what to alleviate those problems? (Probably about as much as McCain's actual energy policy, but....)

If McCain wanted to be, you know, honest - the sort of thing some might call straight talk - yet still take advantage of the moment, he would have still been able to say something like this: "If my foreign policy record and experience were as short as my opponent's and I were offering up my time as a POW as a foreign policy credential, General Clark would have a valid point. But while my time as a POW was long in years, it's a minor entry on my foreign policy résumé, and there's no disputing that my qualifications go far beyond those of Senator Obama."
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More faux outrage on Fau... Fox News, from the inimitable Karl Rove. You know, it might be cheaper to employ a wind-up toy to provide election commentary, and the audience would probably get more from the experience.