From the diaries by Jeff

Remember when McCain said that he had visited all 57 States during his campaign? Then there was the time that McCain said “Well let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.” Oh, and what about the time that McCain said “10,000 people died” in the Kansas tornadoes (death toll really 12). Crazy stuff, eh? Wait, let’s not forget when McCain said that Arkansas was a “nearby” state to Kentucky, arguing that it was closer geographically than his home state. Man was that a major flub showing a complete lack of knowledge of simple geography.

Hmm, wait a minute. I might be making a flub myself, here. Didn’t Obama make all those gaffes (and many, many more)? Why, yes, he did. So, why, amidst an ever growing list of Obama flubs and gaffes, did the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz just pen a story titled “Is McCain’s Age Showing? Tongues Wag Over Flubs”? It’s as if the Obamessiah has spoken in flawless, if not mellifluous, English with nary a gaffe uttered throughout the campaign.

“We interrupt the nonstop coverage of Barack Obama’s overseas trip,” Kurtz writes, “to bring you some breaking whispers about John McCain.”

He has been making a series of verbal slips — invariably described as “gaffes” — that are starting to ricochet from liberal blogs to the mainstream media. And fairly or not, some critics are suggesting the 71-year-old Republican candidate is showing his age.

Well, Kurtz doesn’t exactly say so explicitly, but his piece pointedly reveals the utter lack of introspection as well as simple fairness evinced by the squaller of the leftist blogosphere and their old media lapdogs. The left is certain that McCain is getting a pass.

As Obama’s list of gaffes grows, his are dismissed while the left spares no efforts to report any slip of the tongue by John McCain and then to ascribe it to senility. Yet, as Obama makes gaffe after gaffe the press blows off his mistakes as merely that of a “tired” candidate tuckered out from this exhausting campaign.

But that used up McCain, why he’s just too old.

Politico catalogued the errors on its Web site yesterday, saying: “McCain’s mistakes raise a serious, if uncomfortable question: Are the gaffes the result of his age? And what could that mean in the Oval Office?”

The question is fair, says veteran analyst Charlie Cook of National Journal. “People wonder if McCain is kind of like a pitcher seven or eight years past his prime and misses a few here and there,” he says. “When you’re about to turn 72, people are going to be watching to see if you’re slipping.”

So, McCain is senile and Obama… well, he just needs a nice nap.

The press is doing their level best to gin up McCain’s flubs but are correspondingly dismissive of Obama’s as Kurtz reveals. Obama’s constant gaffes are being called “minor misstatements,” and are only made because he is so, so tired. Why one liberal commentator even thinks that Obama is so tired that “his hair has grown grayer since he began campaigning.” They are each of them bending over backwards to excuse Obama’s gaffes while unbendingly calling McCain’s a result of some mental problem!

Well, there are great lists on the Internet of the flubs and gaffes from both candidates, so you decide what those gaffes can be blamed on. As to the left, unsurprisingly they can only see McCain’s. Good thing the left is so much more “fair” and “balanced” than the rest of us, eh?

But, there is one lingering question that hangs over this whole business. If McCain’s gaffes are a result of his being old and tired, how is it they can use being “tired” as an excuse to paper over the mistakes of the supposedly virile and vital Obama? And if Obama’s are ascribed to mere exhaustion then why can’t we say that McCain is just as tired? After all, McCain is an 71-year-old man. Is Obama so weak that he tires as easily as a man of such advanced years as McCain?

The left’s excuse making is weak indeed. Weak and tired.

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