Factual Basis

I won't bother linking the video, but I was highly amusing by an exchange between CNN's Campbell Brown and the McCain campaign's own Tucker Bounds. The exchange is reported to be the cause of McCain canceling his Larry King Live appearance.

The "interview" was interesting in that Brown asked an obvious and basic question: Given that the McCain campaign has made foreign policy experience a major issue, what experience does Sarah Palin have that qualifies her in this regard? It's a question you'd assume any decent campaign spokesperson would have an answer for.

Instead, Bounds fumbled the answer in an amazing display of political shystering. The best moment was when Brown pointed out it was the Pentagon, not the state governor, who had the authority to send the National Guard overseas. Bounds responded saying "On a factual basis they certainly do."

I like that, "on a factual basis". The implications of that statement are many and delicious.

Implication 1: There's a functional nonfactual basis the McCain campaign works from.
Implication 2: Factual bases are simply one of many at one's disposal, perhaps not even a major one.
Implication 3: Sarah Palin has no foreign policy experience worth speaking of, and hasn't made any notable executive decisions, but that's not going to stop us from making some up.

I'm riding hard on this not because I think this is at all indicative of the McCain campaign as a whole (though someone else might think that way). It's just that you'd think a campaign spokesman sent to talk with the largest news network in the nation would be better prepared to answer the single most obvious question they could be asked. This was Bounds' chance to lay a solid thwacking on Obama while building up Palin, which he blew quite solidly.