A Noun, A Verb and POW

by digby

HuffPo:


Facing a Democratic Party positively giddy over his recent admission that he didn't know how many houses he owned, John McCain quickly returned to a political trump card: his POW experience.

Speaking to the Washington Post, aide Brian Rogers, in full damage-control mode, acknowledged that his boss had "some investment properties and stuff," but added: "This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison."


I'm frankly a little bit surprised they are being so cavalier with this. At some point even the somnambulent press corps is going to start rolling their eyes.

The Huffpo article goes on to catalog the many times McCain has rather awkwardly brought his POW history into the campaign even as they insist that he rarely talks about his experience.

The Obama campaign has decided that it's not a good idea to say anything about McCain's Vietnam service, but it certainly does seem like something that would be good fodder for comics and a reasonable line of inquiry from the press. To me, this is one of the most absurd aspects of the campaign --- the idea that he can successfully get away with evoking his POW experience as a conversation stopper when he's criticized for things completely unrelated to the military or national security (and even that's a stretch) is simply mind-boggling.

They may have gone to the well once too often with this one. Using his time in the Hanoi Hilton to excuse the fact that he's such an out-of-touch aristocrat that he doesn't know how many houses he and his heiress wife own may have been the shark jumping moment for his POW schtick.


.