Why taking Rev. Wright off the table was dumb

Here's a behind-the-scenes story from the McCain camp that clearly illustrates how McCain's decision not to bring up Rev. Wright handcuffed his campaign and made his surrogates look like idiots sometimes.

In an appearance with Rick Sanchez on CNN in the final days of the campaign, Goldfarb had accused Obama of hanging out with anti-American and anti-Semitic figures and cited PLO sympathizer Rashid Khalidi as an example. Sanchez wanted more.

SANCHEZ: Can you name one other person besides Khalidi who he hangs around who is anti-Semitic?

GOLDFARB: Yes, he pals around with William Ayers who is an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

SANCHEZ: No, no, the question I asked you is can you name one other person who he hangs around with who is anti-Semitic? Because that is what you said.

GOLDFARB: Look, we all know there are people who Barack Obama has been in hot water--

SANCHEZ: Michael, I asked you to name one person. One.

GOLDFARB: Rick, we both--

SANCHEZ: You said he hangs around with people who are anti-Semitic. Okay. We got Khalidi on the table. Give me number two. Who's the other anti-Semitic person that he hangs around with that we quote, "All know about"?

GOLDFARB: Rick, we both know who number two is.

SANCHEZ: Who? Would you tell us?

GOLDFARB: No, Rick, I think we all know who we're talking about here.

SANCHEZ: Somebody who is anti-Semitic that he hangs around with?

GOLDFARB: Absolutely.

SANCHEZ: Well, say it.

GOLDFARB: I think we all know who we are talking about, Rick.

Goldfarb had done the interview from a studio at the campaign headquarters in Crystal City, in suburban Virginia outside Washington, D.C. His exchange rocketed around the Internet and quickly became a favorite of left-wing bloggers--who alternately accused him of playing dirty by making charges he couldn't back up and wimping out by refusing to name a second anti-Semite. Others wondered whom Goldfarb was talking about.

If it wasn't obvious to them, the identity of "number two" was clear to those inside McCain headquarters: Reverend Jeremiah Wright. McCain had pledged last spring that he wouldn't use Wright's hate-filled sermons against Obama, who had listened to them for 20 years in the pews of Wright's church. But virtually no one on McCain's staff agreed with the candidate's restraint. Goldfarb had joked before the appearance that he was going to "go rogue" and bring up Wright's name in the interview. He didn't--barely--thereby preserving his job at the cost of looking a bit ridiculous. But when he walked into the campaign's common area after his exchange with Sanchez, his colleagues gave him a standing ovation.

On Going Rogue

Rich Lowry says "a former McCain aide" has denied a Newsweek story alleging that Sarah Palin went rogue and accused Barack Obama of "palling around" with William Ayers without the approval of the McCain campaign.

According to Newsweek's embedded election story:

There was grumbling that Palin had jumped the gun by bringing up Ayers at her rallies before the campaign could properly do the groundwork with a rollout strategy and ads. (At one rally, she had talked about Obama "palling around with terrorists.") Palin was mad at her handlers. Reportedly, she felt that Wallace and Schmidt had poorly coached and advised her. One adviser later speculated that she impulsively talked about Ayers because she felt thwarted—she had really wanted to bring up the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (Actually, Palin was feeling hurt and angry over the tabloid treatment of her 17-year-old daughter Bristol, and decided—on her own—that Ayers should be fair game. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that would launch an Ayers attack the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and Salter was resisting.)

However, this story was debunked immediately by Randy Scheunemann, McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, who emailed Marc Ambinder after he first reported the palling-around line had not been vetted by HQ.

The question is, why exactly is someone in McCain's campaign falsely accusing Palin of being the one to bring William Ayers up?

On the surface, bringing up Ayers doesn't really hurt Palin with the base, who had been screaming at McCain to get tougher and raise Obama's associations.

What it does, however, is protect McCain, who had been compared, unfairly, by John Lewis to George Wallace.

These litany of lies being anonymously leaked to the media are designed not only to damage Sarah Palin, but to restore McCain's reputation. These smears are not random, but are fully part of the McCain campaign's exit strategy -- blame Palin for the loss and restore Senator Maverick in good favour with the MSM and his Democratic friends, such as Lewis.

Back to that Newsweek story, here's an account of what happened when McCain discovered the Lewis remarks:

McCain was on his bus, about to board a plane in Moline, Ill., when he read the remarks on an aide's BlackBerry. He was so dumbfounded that he held the plane on the tarmac while he considered how to respond. Salter, who had penned the chapter on Lewis, urged McCain to remain more dignified than Lewis had been in his remarks. But Schmidt called in from headquarters brimming with outrage. "Sir," said Schmidt, "he called you a racist. It must be responded to." Nicolle Wallace agreed. Salter was not so sure. He was "very pained" over the incident, Schmidt later recalled about Salter, but his instinct told him not to get his boss into a name-calling fight with a martyr of the civil-rights movement. McCain decided to go with Schmidt and put out a strong statement calling on Obama to "immediately and personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments." (Obama left it to a spokesman to blandly state, "Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies.")

According to several aides, McCain had trouble shaking his sadness over Lewis's statement. To the reporters traveling with McCain, the candidate seemed uncertain, as if he was not quite sure what he had gotten himself into

That was fundamentally McCain's problem and why he was a terrible candidate. Someone unfairly compares him to a racist and McCain and his long-time aide Salter's reaction is to feel sad about it. Normal people would be outraged.

"She performed very well under her interrogation"

The key quote is at the end.

This is dumb

This guy is supposed to be helping John McCain

Pressed to provide an example of what McCain had accomplished on that committee, Holtz-Eakin said the senator did not have jurisdiction over financial markets, then he held up his Blackberry, telling reporters: "He did this."

"Telecommunications of the United States, the premiere innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create," Holtz-Eakin said. "And that's what he did. He both regulated and deregulated the industry."

So you think Palin's got them pumped?

From today's rally.

Ann Coulter and Dennis Miller: Quotes of the Day

Ann Coulter on John McCain and water boarding.

McCain is hysterical about pouring water down terrorists' noses and campaigns to shut down Guantanamo.

He demands that no terrorist interrogation be "degrading" -- perhaps recalling how not degrading it was for people in the upper floors of the Twin Towers to have to leap to their deaths rather than be burned alive on Sept. 11.

Dennis Miller on Mark Steyn:

"America Alone should be the western world's Koran."