McCain Campaign Incapable of "Straight Talk"

In my continuing quest to bring you incredibly minor pieces of election related "news," today I call your attention to the following web ad that appeared on the Washington Post's website:


Notice the attribution for the quote? Ah, a "famous person" thought that Palin, "killed." That's pretty funny, right? Clearly the campaign made a tiny mistake and sent out a version of the ad before it was finalized. This kind of thing is pretty common in campaigns. You add a bit of filler text to something (a memo, a press release, a web ad, etc.) and then you forget to go back in and replace the filler with the actual content. Totally harmless (the "famous person," by the way, was supposed to be Peggy Noonan, who apparently did make that comment on MSNBC last night), right?

Weird, then, that when the McCain campaign is asked about this little mistake, their response is:

"Is she not a famous person?" asked McCain campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb, queried about the ad. Given an assent that Noonan is, indeed, famous (or, at least, famous in political circles), he continued, "OK, so what's the problem?"

"If there's no factual inaccuracy, I don't know what the problem is," he added.

"I don't know what the problem is." What a strange response. Why doesn't he just say something like, "Whoops, this is a little mistake. The ad's designer wasn't told who gave the quote and we just forgot to replace the filler with the real name. The quote's obviously right, so harm done." Instead, it appears that Mr. Goldfarb wants us to believe either that the campaign released the ad that way on purpose ("Is she not a famous person") or that there's nothing wrong with an ad that has no actual attribution of the central quote on it ("I don't know what the problem is"). Either way, it's a really odd answer, and totally unneccesary.

Without reading too much into this strange small episode, I do think it reflects the defensive crouch from which the McCain campaign seems to be operating lately. Every little question is interpreted as an attack. No mistake can be admitted. Slip-ups are denied, flubs are obfuscated, and gaffes are spun. Of course, every campaign does this to one degree or another, but with this web ad, I think McCain's team is taking it to a whole new level.