Was John McCain's Al-Qaeda Gaffe a Slip of the Tongue or a Deliberate Deception?

Posted by Richard Blair, The All Spin Zone at 10:36 AM on March 20, 2008.

On the heels of John McCain's recent middle east political sojourn, he made a couple of statements linking al-Qaeda to the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran. If one of the two remaining Democratic Party presidential candidates had attempted to make such a linkage, the media would have blanketed the airwaves with GOP accusations of such statements being evidence of that the Dems are light on foreign policy experience. Perhaps Fox News would even go as far as to accuse the Dems of being "deceptive".

But St. John McCain? He gets a free pass - not just for the initial malaprop in Jordan - but for two subsequent statements claiming almost the same thing.

This morning, Glenn Greenwald put together a spot-on analysis of the media's treatment of McCain on not only the Iran / al-Qaeda issue, but in general:

...The tepidness of the TV "liberal" pundits when it comes to GOP political leaders is always a major factor in the imbalance of media coverage. As this last week yet again demonstrated, conservative commentators do not display any similar reluctance when it comes to eviscerating the character and fitness of Democratic candidates.

But there's an even more distortive aspect to all of this. The reality is that John McCain's understanding of foreign policy and his approach to national security has proven to be simplistic, destructive and idiotic. Nobody spewed more pre-invasion falsehoods and confused and misleading claims about Iraq than John McCain did. And he's been the Prime Cheerleader for one of the most destructive wars in U.S. history. The notion that he has expertise in foreign policy or sound judgment is a total myth, yet it's one that his press fans accept and enforce as orthodoxy...

A few weeks ago, John McCain held a private, "no news" get-together in Arizona for the media corps that follows him around the country (and apparently overseas, as well). The affair was pure schmooze, booze, bbq'd ribs, and free beer. As the McCain campaign termed it, a "thank you" to the media for following him around and providing coverage of the candidate stenography services.

On at least a couple of occasions, I've gone off on the media for their cozy relationships with the politicians and parties that they're supposed to objectively cover and analyze. The recent Bush performance at the annual Washington press corps dinner is just another example of the inbred relationship that exists between the media elites and the entrenched political establishment.

Not to overstate my concerns, but the presidential election this year is arguably the most important of my lifetime. I believe that the media has an obligation and a solemn duty to get it right for once. If that means backing away from the open bars for a few months, if that means asking candidates (and their staffers) robust questions (and pressing for answers beyond the "spin"), then let's get it done.

Most importantly, stories such as those similar to McCain's Iran / al-Qaeda gaffes can not be allowed to die a quiet death due to benign neglect on the part of a bus full of co-opted legacy media stenographers.

Richard Blair is the blogmaster of All Spin Zone.