Chuck Todd admits media gave McCain a pass over Iran/al-Qaeda gaffe and would have attacked the Dems
By: John Amato on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 PM - PDT
On Meet the Press this morning, ...
Chuck Todd admits media gave McCain a pass over Iran/al-Qaeda gaffe and would have attacked the Dems
By: John Amato on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 PM - PDT
On Meet the Press this morning, NBC's Chuck Todd got honest and told us what we already know, but what the media rarely likes to confess. McCain has a lot in the bank with the media and they will help him out of his problems. You're all aware of McCain's linking al-Qaeda to Iran all last week—which is not happening because of the Sunni/Shia difference. He had to get bailed out by his Lieberman posse and his FOX friend Britt Hume, but the real story given to us by Chuck Todd is that the media would have attacked either of the two Democratic nominees for days on end over the same gaffe.
Todd: He's got enough of that in the bank, at least with the media, that he can get away with it. I mean, the irony to this is had either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama misspoke like that, it'd have been on a running loop, and it would become a, a big problem for a couple of days for them.
He's got enough in the bank so he can get away with it, but the Dems need to have fear of the media's running loop. Here you have it folks. When McCain makes a HUGE blunder on the one issue he tells America he's qualified to run on: foreign policy, the media shrugs it off, but if a Democratic candidate had made the same mistake it would have been headlines for days. You could assume that Lieberman would then have been booked on teevee 24/7 —yelling into the cameras that they are incompetents on the very serious issue of foreign policy instead of whispering sweet answers in McCain's ear to correct him. Get used to this treatment from the media. It's sickening...
MR. RUSSERT: And then, then Lindsey Graham, who he was with, and then Joe Lieberman both tried to say to him, al-Qaeda is Sunni, not trained by the Shiite Iranian government. Does that kind of stumble hurt a McCain candidacy?
MR. TODD: Well, what's odd about the, the stumble is that it--is it a stumble or was it, or was it that this talking point that he'd been, that he'd been using for actually a couple weeks or over a week, where he was talking about sort of almost blurring that the, the enemy of al-Qaeda and the enemy of the, the Shia-trained Iranians and sort of blurring them as one enemy. And the, the question is, did he just sort of--he truncated it to the point where he ended up misspeaking. The, the problem, of course, McCain has is that he can't, you know, he doesn't want to make it so that he, he forgot it for a minute. You know, he's--because of the age issue, he can't ever look like he's having a senior moment. So instead, he's better off going ahead and saying, you know, OK, so he misspoke. Even if he gets dinged on the experience stuff, "Oh, he says he's Mr. Experience. Doesn't he know the difference between this stuff?" He's got enough of that in the bank, at least with the media, that he can get away with it. I mean, the irony to this is had either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama misspoke like that, it'd have been on a running loop, and it would become a, a big problem for a couple of days for them.
