Bomber Ann

In the last few days Senator McCain’s use of a Beach Boys song to clarify a question on Iran has been blown way out of proportion. When an audience member tried to ask McCain about bombing Iran, the Senator turned it into a clever little ditty, rephrasing the lyrics to the song “Barbara Ann” to say “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran”. In the normal world, it’s not a terribly big deal. But in the highly focused and very public world of election politics, especially so with the speed and pervasiveness of the internet, it is a big deal. Opposition jumps on the opportunity to portray a candidate of the opposing party as insensitive, or incompetent, or downright dumb, which is exactly what the Dems over at MoveOn did. In this video they attack McCain’s new interpretation of the song, calling him “reckless”. This calls for a discussion on how much more picky we can get. At some point the public has to realize ads like this do very little for the overall defense—even Democrats must roll their eyes and think ‘Oh yes, this makes our candidates seem so much more responsible’ (Well, that’s what I said, and I am the voice of the people after all). Where are the real issues? He says nothing about his actual position on Iran in that snippet; wouldn’t that be more useful? Are the Democrats just sore from being pounced on by Republicans for years? Could this actually be a turning point for McCain’s candidacy? David Weinberger discusses this “Zero Tolerance for Humans” policy.

Tangent: who honestly knew they were singing "Barbara Ann"? Certainly not this blogger.

Some other election updates:
Hilary maintains lead amongst Dems, Giuliani slips.
Obama raised more money than Hillary.
Hillary will put her husband to work if elected (blogger's note: yay!).
Giuliani is flip-flopping on immigration.
Neither McCain nor Giuliani support gun control in the wake of VT tragedy. (Sidenote: Democrats in Congress have become more lax about gun control as well)