McCain And Katrina

For some reason, John McCain has spent the past two days in Louisiana (if he thinks the state depopulated of black people after Hurricane Katrina is worthy of attention, he's in BIG trouble), and yesterday, he got a little tripped up about his response to the Katrina tragedy.

Still in Louisiana today, following his epic speech in Kenner last night, John McCain was asked by a local reporter why he had voted against creating a federal commission to investigate the Katrina disaster.

McCain's response? "I've supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy. . . ."

The problem is that's just not true. He voted against such a commission -- twice.

If you want to extend that out, his bestest pal Joe Lieberman has chaired the committee with jurisdiction over investigating the federal response to the hurricane and the condition of the levees, and he checked out on that investigation two years ago.

Barack Obama jumped on this yesterday, once again demonstrating the speed of their rapid response team.

As the Obama campaign put it, “Whether he simply wasn’t aware of his voting record again or he was intentionally misleading the people of Louisiana, John McCain certainly isn’t offering us ‘leadership you can believe in.’”

That's McCain's new rip-off tag line, by the way: "Leadership You Can Believe In". More like "Leadership You Can't Remember."

The problem is making this stick. The traditional media is very invested in an image of McCain as a straight-talker, that they'd twist his words in whatever way possible to fit the narrative.

But the Obama team could have just sent along one photo, taken while people were drowning in New Orleans and the federal government wasn't doing much of anything about it:



It's one of those "Picture=1,000 words" moments. I expect to see that one a lot this election season.