(Site Note: With this post, we say good bye to Steve Benen as a contributor to C&L. Steve has accepted a position with The Washington Monthly. While we'll miss his posts here greatly, we wish him great luck in his new position~ Nicole)

  When the McCain campaign unveiled its now-infamous Spears/Hilton ad, the NYT’s editorial board, like every other sensible political observer, criticized it. Michael Goldfarb, McCain’s official in-house blogger, responded by comparing the Times’ editors to “the average Daily Kos diarist sitting at home in his mother’s basement and ranting into the ether between games of Dungeons & Dragons.”

This week, after questions arose about the veracity of a McCain anecdote from his days as a prisoner of war, Goldfarb went back to the well, blasting "the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd."

After the first insulting comment, Goldfarb backed away, while sticking to the vernacular: “If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.”

This led my friend Adam Serwer to raise an excellent point.

That’s the kind of deep, personal animosity that you associate with experience, which clearly Goldfarb has. It’s not hard to imagine that some basement somewhere holds the abandoned d20s, dusty rulebooks, and broken heart of a young Michael Goldfarb who never got to be Dungeon Master because he wouldn’t stop yelling. In fact, it’s hard not to wonder if, when Michael Goldfarb is berating the D&D players of the world, he’s really just berating Michael Goldfarb.

Ta-Nehisi Coates added, “[W]e often are what we hate. Goldfarb remark smacks of a geek trying to get down by slamming other geeks.”

The good news is, the “Pro-Obama Dungeons and Dragons crowd” is apparently getting organized. I can’t help but wonder if the McCain campaign has inadvertently woken an angry nerd army....

It became something of a running joke in 1996, when Bob Dole publicly conceded, many times, that he hadn’t even read the Republican Party’s platform. ”I have due respect for the platform,” Dole said at one point after his convention. ”I read a lot of parts that I thought were essential.”

Twelve years later, we’ve reached the point at which a presidential candidate not only won’t read his platform, but doesn’t much care what’s in it.

Jean from Ferrisburgh, Vt., wants the Republican Party to get off “the global-warming bus.” Paul from Carrollton, Texas, wants it to “reject fetal stem-cell research.” And Larry from Waynesboro, Pa., wants the party to promise to “deport those who are here illegally.”

Republicans are inviting suggestions for their party platform this year, and thousands have responded online. But when a committee meets to draft the document in Minneapolis next week, one voice will be largely absent: John McCain’s.... Instead of fighting with party activists to form the platform around his own ideas, Sen. McCain has taken a hands-off approach.

McCain and his party’s base disagree on a few hot-button issues, and GOP activists are intent on making sure their platform reflects their priorities. McCain’s response is to ignore the platform altogether.

This certainly certainly seems like a reminder of the relevance of platforms in modern politics. Ostensibly, the Republican Party’s platform and the Republican Party’s presidential nominee would be on the same page. Indeed, from a historical perspective, voters who sought to learn more about a presidential candidate’s policy agenda would turn to the candidate’s party platform and read all about his priorities. And yet now, McCain won’t write, read, or care a whit about the platform that comes out of his own convention.

I remember working on a project in grad school that led me to read a lot of old party platforms, and it was a pretty fascinating way to watch the transitions of major parties over the decades. But at this point, they’re antiquated, meaningless documents. It’s probably time to scrap them altogether.

Two weeks ago, it seemed Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter had just about had it with John McCain. The columnist said he’s “misread McCain,” who, it turns out, is “a surprisingly immature politician” who may not be “ready to lead.” Alter’s piece concluded that McCain had “mortgaged his precious personal honor.”

But underlying Alter’s argument is that McCain is still a good guy who’s been led astray by irresponsible advisors who’ve led him astray. McCain’s ugly campaign is “out of sync with the real guy,” Alter said.

In his new column, Alter takes McCain to task for “making stuff up about Barack Obama,” and this time, Alter doesn’t make excuses for the Republican nominee.

As usual, news organizations are deeply afraid to say that one side is more negative than the other. Doing so sounds “unfair.” It’s much easier, and less controversial, to say that “both candidates” are being negative. That would be “balanced”, but also untrue. […]

[O]verall, and to his credit, Obama has not engaged in anywhere near the number of falsehoods as McCain.

For about a month, McCain’s campaign has been resorting to charges that are patently false. When Obama traveled abroad in July, to positive reviews, McCain decided he had to make attack ads that went far beyond the norm. In the past, plainly deceptive ads were the province of the Republican National Committee or the Democratic National Committee or independent committees free to fling mud that didn’t bear the fingerprints of candidates. But not this time. These smears come directly from the candidate.

The litany is no doubt familiar to those watching the campaign closely. McCain lied about Obama being responsible for gas prices. Then about Obama’s treatment of wounded U.S. troops in Germany. And then again about Obama’s tax policies.

[W]hen he resorts to these kinds of falsehoods, and casts such aspersions on his opponent’s patriotism, John McCain is no longer putting his country first. If he were, he would recognize that the interests of the nation require a relatively truthful campaign. To fulfill his image of himself, McCain should stop lying about his opponent. For a man with his claims to honor and integrity, that’s not too much to ask.

I think McCain has lost Jonathan Alter.

On Saturday night, at the forum at Saddleback Church, the Rev. Rick Warren asked John McCain to name “the three wisest people that you know that you would rely on heavily in an administration.” McCain listed three people: Gen. David Petraeus, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), and eBay CEO Meg Whitman.

It was nice, I suppose, for McCain to mention Lewis in this context. Indeed, I don’t doubt for a moment that Lewis is quite wise and would have a lot to offer McCain in the way of advice.

But it was more than a little odd to see McCain tout his support for Lewis’ wisdom given that McCain has largely ignored Lewis during their decades of concurrent congressional service. Jonathan Stein has the story:

At the time of McCain’s Selma speech, a Lewis associate told my colleague David Corn that McCain has never been close to Lewis. Lewis was not told about McCain’s speech in Selma in advance, nor was he invited to attend.

In response to McCain’s latest invocation of his name, Rep. Lewis said in a statement requested by Mother Jones, “I cannot stop one human being, even a presidential candidate, from admiring the courage and sacrifice of peaceful protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge or making comments about it.” But, he added, “Sen. McCain and I are colleagues in the US Congress, not confidantes. He does not consult me. And I do not consult him.”

Well, no, of course not. McCain is a conservative Republican with an underwhelming record on civil rights. Lewis is a progressive Democrat who has championed civil rights throughout his life.

McCain is going to “rely … heavily” on Lewis if elected? We should be so lucky.

Believe it or not, Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity are still, even now, laughing like school children over the notion of properly-inflated tires.

A lot of Republicans have said a lot of stupid things about energy policy in recent weeks, but this may very well be the single most inane comment any of them have uttered publicly. (Worse than a House Republican from Texas exclaiming, “Let’s bring up the Paris Hilton plan”? Yes, even worse than that.)

Ben at TP valiantly goes to the trouble of pointing out why Gingrich’s argument is demonstrably ridiculous — explaining why tire maintenance is a good idea, and wouldn’t “enrich Big Oil” — but I’d just add that it’s worth remembering just how idiotic Newt Gingrich’s worldview can be.

About a year ago, the WaPo’s David Broder said the former House Speaker has “earned the label ‘visionary.’” That’s absurd; Gingrich is a little more than pseudo-scholarly nut.

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At Saturday night’s event at Saddleback Church, John McCain told the largely evangelical audience a version of history that the religious right likes to believe: “Our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values and principles.”

That is, to put it mildly, historically dubious — the nation was founded on the secular principles, as part of the separation of church and state — but it’s nevertheless a phrase McCain seems to be especially fond of lately.

On a frozen winter evening at a Town Hall meeting in a school in the Manchester, N.H., suburbs, John McCain expressed surprise and irritation with an intelligence report downplaying the threat of Iran’s nuclear program.

At the end of a long list of reasons to be suspicious of the Iranians, McCain declared: “And they sure don’t share our Judeo-Christian values.”

It seemed at the time to be an odd thing to say about a Muslim country. After all, even if there were no nuclear program, no oil, and no rabble-rousing president, Iran still wouldn’t have Judeo-Christian values. And it’s troubling to wonder if that alone would be a reason for suspicion.

Quite right. For McCain to characterize our hostility for a rival nation in such starkly religious terms reminds us that when it comes to foreign policy, McCain frequently doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

But it’s that phrase that continues to stand out. The Boston Globe dug around a bit and noticed that McCain references “Judeo-Christian values” all the time, when talking about policies as varied as the economy, immigration, and foreign policy.

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The latest Pew Survey on News Consumption, which is conducted every other year, was released yesterday, and is chock full of interesting tidbits and results. Most notably, there was a great section of the report on news-consumer knowledge and sophistication.

About half of Americans (53%) can correctly identify the Democrats as the party that has a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. In February 2007, shortly after the Democrats gained control of the House after a dozen years of GOP rule, many more people (76%) knew the Democrats held the majority.

The public is less familiar with the secretary of state (Condoleezza Rice) and the prime minister of Great Britain (Gordon Brown). About four-in-ten (42%) can name Rice as the current secretary of state. The public’s ability to identify Rice has not changed much over recent years: In April 2006 and December 2004, shortly before she was sworn in, 43% could correctly identify her.

The prime minister of Great Britain is not well known among the public. Just more than a quarter (28%) can correctly identify Gordon Brown as the leader of Great Britain.

Overall, 18% of the public is able to correctly answer all three political knowledge questions, while a third (33%) do not know the answer to any of the questions.

I’ll admit, I’m torn about how humiliating this is to the nation overall. For the typical American not to know Gordon Brown strikes me as only mildly distressing — Brown has only been Prime Minister for about a year, and most of the public was probably more familiar with Tony Blair.

But one-in-three Americans got all of the questions wrong. For all the talk about the Democratic Congress, barely half the country knows there’s a Democratic majority.

Maybe my perspective is skewed because I just finished reading Rick Shenkman’s “Just How Stupid Are We?” but at a certain point, the political world is going to have to come to grips with the fact that a striking percentage of the electorate has no idea what’s going on.

As for the other results from the Pew survey, it was also interesting to note which news consumers did better than others.

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I’m not surprised Dan Bartlett is going to one of the networks; I’m surprised Dan Bartlett didn’t go to one of the networks sooner. (via TP)

Former Counselor to President Bush, Dan Bartlett, has joined CBS News as a political analyst. Bartlett will provide on-air analysis on a variety of political issues, “including at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions and beyond,” according to the press release.

Said CBS News & Sports president Sean McManus, “We’re very pleased to have Dan Bartlett join our team. We now go into the final stages of this fascinating political season with two analysts — Dan and Joe [Trippi] — who have had unique and extensive hands-on experience in major political campaigns and government.”

This is the latest part of a strange phenomenon of rewarding the Bush gang with high-profile opportunities at major media outlets. The Bush White House has been, for lack of a better word, a disaster for the country. From a journalistic perspective, these guys have been a nightmare — embracing almost comical levels of secrecy, propaganda, and media manipulation.

And yet, the moment presidential aides leave the West Wing, media outlets jump at the chance to put them on the payroll.

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When I watched the presidential candidate forum at Saddleback Church the other night, I took notes with a certain perspective in mind: which of Obama’s responses were going to be used against him by the right? Maybe I haven’t been reading enough conservative blogs lately, because I didn’t see the angry response to this remark coming:

Obama went on to explain how (and why) we can reduce the number of abortions in this country, and why he’s pro-choice.

And yet, it was that “above my pay grade” line that seems to be getting all the attention. To hear Obama’s conservative detractors tell it, there’s no one above a president’s pay grade, so the answer didn’t make any sense.

Maybe the right is being deliberately coy here, and looking to manufacture another controversy, but I thought it was pretty obvious Obama was referring to God

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The NYT’s David Kirkpatrick had a very strong piece yesterday on John McCain’s foreign policy worldview, his embrace of neoconservatism, and his response to the attacks of 9/11. It applies a little more scrutiny than McCain is probably accustomed to receiving.

[By the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001], Mr. McCain, the Vietnam War hero and famed straight talker of the 2000 Republican primary, had taken on a new role: the leading advocate of taking the American retaliation against Al Qaeda far beyond Afghanistan. In a marathon of television and radio appearances, Mr. McCain recited a short list of other countries said to support terrorism, invariably including Iraq, Iran and Syria.

“There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” Mr. McCain said the next morning on ABC News. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he added, on MSNBC. “I don’t think if you got bin Laden tomorrow that the threat has disappeared,” he said on CBS, pointing toward other countries in the Middle East.

Within a month he made clear his priority. “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!”

Just to clarify, by October 2001, McCain was already a cheerleader for invading Iraq. This was his reflexive response to the terrorism perpetrated by al Qaeda.

It’s an anecdote that reminds us of so many questions surrounding McCain, including his temperament, his judgment, and his “hothead” personality.

“He has the personality of a fighter pilot: when somebody stings you, you want to strike out,” said retired Gen. John H. Johns, a former friend and supporter of Mr. McCain who turned against him over the Iraq war. “Just like the American people, his reaction was: show me somebody to hit.”

And while that may strike some as appealing, the problem with McCain’s approach is its indiscriminate attitude — he looks for somebody to hit before he actually thinks about the merit and/or consequences.

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In late June, the McCain campaign was aggressively pushing the line that John McCain has taken political risks by working with Dems on important issues. Pressed for a recent example to bolster the claim, a campaign spokesperson said, “It’s fairly significant that Senator McCain worked on the immigration reform legislation while he was pursing the nomination of his party,” adding that he “reached across the aisle despite a heated primary campaign.”

And this week, as the McCain campaign began to push the line that Barack Obama doesn’t put “country first,” the same team relied on the same example. Newsweek’s Howard Fineman reported:

I asked McCain’s closest advisor and friend, Mark Salter, for an example of a time when Obama did not “put the country first.” His answer: the Senate maneuvering of immigration legislation.

In his view, Obama did big labor’s bidding by helping to kill the chances for a grand compromise on immigration reform.

“His campaign came before his country,” Salter told me in an e-mail.

In other words, if you weren’t for McCain’s deal, you didn’t put the country first.

Fineman’s right to find Salter’s argument foolish, but the argument is actually even worse than Fineman suggests: McCain wasn’t for McCain’s deal, which suggests McCain didn’t put country first, either.

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Just a few months ago, Chris Matthews asked John McCain if he would consider a pro-choice running mate, such as former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. “I don’t know if [his position on the issue] would stop him, but it would be difficult,” McCain said.

McCain is saying something different now.

Republican John McCain says he has not ruled out choosing Pennsylvania’s popular former Gov. Tom Ridge as a running mate despite his support for abortion rights, a hot-button issue that could inflame some voters among the party’s conservative base.

McCain appeared to be testing the issue — weighing the benefits against the costs of picking Ridge, who could help the Arizona senator win Pennsylvania. […]

“And also I feel that — and I’m not trying to equivocate here — that Americans want us to work together,” McCain added. “You know, Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don’t think that that would necessarily would rule Tom Ridge out.”

Chatting with the Weekly Standard, McCain was pressed a little further, and reminded that he told Republican primary voters that he wouldn’t consider NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg for the ticket because he’s pro-choice. McCain told the Standard that Republicans should be inclusive, and the party’s voters could find Ridge more palatable because Bloomberg “is pro-gay rights, pro, you know, a number of other issues.”

In other words, the GOP should be open to voters who support abortion rights, but not gay rights. Republicans should be tolerant, but not too tolerant.

How open minded of him.

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The Obama campaign unveiled a solid new ad recently, which, among other things, goes after McCain for having voted with George W. Bush 95% of the time last year.

Soon after, the McCain campaign responded by — I kid you not — telling reporters, “In the Senate, Barack Obama has voted in lockstep with President George W. Bush nearly half the time.”

I generally find McCain campaign talking points more annoying than amusing, but this is hysterical. Let’s consider some of the reasons this is an unusually dumb thing to say:

1. If the McCain campaign wants to make the presidential race about which candidate voted with Bush more, McCain might as well deliver his concession speech now.

2. “Nearly half” is not “in lockstep.” Many Bush administration pronouncements are not controversial, so every senator is going to vote with the White House line at least some of the time.

3. The McCain gang certainly knew this criticism was coming, and had plenty of time to prepare. This is the best they could come up with.

4. The McCain campaign argues that Obama is the Senate’s biggest liberal. The McCain campaign argues that Obama has “voted in lockstep” with Bush. Oddly enough, they’re making both arguments at the same time.

Go ahead, Tucker Bounds, tell us another one.

Once in a while, the depth of John McCain’s foreign policy confusion stops being funny, and starts getting scary.

About a month ago, McCain said the war in Iraq is the “first major conflict since 9/11,” which seemed pretty odd given the war in Afghanistan.

But this is considerably worse.

Both presidential campaigns have invested pretty heavily in television ads for the Olympics, with Obama reportedly spending $5 million, and McCain $6 million. Given reports on high ratings for this year’s games, it’s probably money well spent — a lot of folks will see the commercials.

But it strikes me as interesting how the competing campaigns are going about communicating with this particular audience. Here’s the new Obama campaign spot, the second to run during the Olympics.

It’s a simple, straightforward, positive spot on the economy. There’s not much to dislike. Indeed, it’s reminiscent of the Obama campaign’s first Olympic ad, which was another positive commercial about energy policy and the economy.

The McCain campaign is trying something very different.

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