Don't Go There

Over at Sully's blog, Andrew notes that a couple of other bloggers have been criticizing him for questioning the authenticity of McCain's "Cross in the Dirt" anecdote:

"Dean Barnett thinks the cross in the dirt wild goose chase betrays a sense of panic among Obamaphiles:

By all means, let’s focus more attention on McCain’s stint at the Hanoi Hilton. Maybe the Obama campaign will offer up as a counterpoint Obama’s supremely courageous opposition to the Iraq War while on the front lines of the Illinois state legislature. And by all means, let’s have the left continue its campaign to minimize McCain’s service in Vietnam. That should work wonders for Obama!

Megan is similarly puzzled:

The only way this would actually hurt McCain is if you found a signed letter from him saying that this never happened. Since it's very unlikely that such a letter exists, the very best that this effort will achieve is sowing seeds of doubt in a few minds, making themselves look desperate to almost everyone else (and thereby making people wonder what's wrong with Obama, that they're this desperate), and outraging a number of people that you would call McCain's honor into question with absolutely no evidence, or hope of obtaining [some]."

Allow me to add in my voice to Dean and Megan's. While there's no doubt that the story does seem like it was, at best, pieced together from other material (not going to put in links, just check out Sully's blog from the last week for evidence) it doesn't belie McCain's greater narrative, and in the public sphere this questioning is undoubtably going to look desperate and nitpicky. And if any real hard evidence did pop up proving that McCain made the whole thing up, he'll probably just hold a press conferance claiming that he forgot. After all the American public seems to be very forgiving of old white guys with soft heads.

Seems to me that a more productive attack would be to remind people that McCain is a cheater who has no idea about the value of money.