I just watched the Hardball Team (Mike Barnacle, Andrea Mitchell and Roger Simon) all give McCain a pass on the recent negatives attacks. Their reason for excusing him was what was very unusual to say the least. Follow me over the bump.
Now the conventional wisdom in politics is that, if a campaign decides to go negative, the candidate pays a price with his own favorability ratings and integrity. I think we would all agree that that is fair. The way to circumvent this has been to have 527 groups do the really insidious attacking so the candidate can keep clean hands.
Well it seems as if the media want to have John McCain's campaign act as his own 527 because they cleared John McCain of all responsibility for the attacks. Their basic reasoning was (I kid you not): "Poor McCain, he so hates to attack anybody. It seems his campaign is not telling him that the stuff he says are outright lies. He is in a bubble where he is so busy, that whatever Rick Davis tells him Obama did or said he believes it. He does not have the time to check the facts himself so when he says Obama wanted to carry the press to visit the troops he is not lying he is just being misled BY HIS OWN CAMPAIGN" Are they kidding me?!!
This whole reaction was surprising given the fact that Andrea Mitchell was dogging him last week for the pettiness and inaccuracies. It seems they got a talking to from someone in the McCain camp and they feel the need to protect his integrity.
This is political gold for John McCain. If he can smear Obama with his own campaign and have the media clear him of any wrongdoing, we are in for a long couple months until the election.