Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) is, as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a fairly prominent supporter of Barack Obama. With that role, I generally expect him to say nice things about Obama, and tout his national security agenda.
Seeing him go after John McCain like this, however, was a little unexpected.
Rockefeller, who supports Barack Obama for President and has campaigned for him, said in an interview with the Charleston Gazette editorial board this week that McCain was not grounded in issues affecting people because, in part, he was a fighter pilot.
“He flies at 35,000 feet and drops laser-guided bombs, missiles,” Rockefeller said. “He was long gone before they hit. What happened down there, he doesn’t know.” Rockefeller added that he knew the comments were “unkind” because McCain was fighting for the country, but he added, “You sort of have to care what goes on in people’s lives.”
The McCain campaign responded through Lt. Col. Orson Swindle, USMC (retired) who served in Vietnam and spent 20 months in a Hanoi prison with McCain. “We know what flying through hell is like and the senator doesn’t,” Swindle told Metronews. “He probably never heard a shot fired in anger unless it was in the backwoods of West Virginia hunting or something like that.”
Rockefeller has since apologized, rather profusely, saying, “I have profound respect and appreciate his dedication to our country, and I regret my very poor choice of words.”
But these are the days of the Umbrage Wars, and McCain apparently isn’t inclined to accept the apology.
Indeed, when the Obama campaign issued a statement saying Obama “does not agree with what Senator Rockefeller said,” the McCain gang demanded more.
John McCain’s campaign said an apology from Barack Obama’s team for comments from West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who supports the Illinois senator’s presidential bid, were not enough, calling for a response from the candidate himself.
“It was a spokesperson. Just as with the situation with liberal attack artist Ed Schultz, Obama refused to reject the statements personally. It’s a trend that undermines Barack Obama’s credibility when he makes calls for a ‘new’ more ‘accountable’ debate,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds. […]
[T]he McCain camp charged that his comments were “more than a coincidence that Obama campaign surrogates are making character attacks against John McCain without any repudiation.”
Now, realistically, if the Obama campaign really wanted to go after McCain like this, aides probably wouldn’t have called on Jay Rockefeller. The guy isn’t exactly a polished attack machine.
But the Umbrage Wars have very little to do with logic. McCain demands satisfaction, and Obama doesn’t much seem to care.
I’ll gladly concede that Rockefeller’s comments were cheap and definitely warranted an apology, which he promptly offered. And I suppose I don’t blame the McCain campaign for trying to capitalize on every available opportunity.
But in general, folks really can’t work themselves into too big a dither every time a pol makes a foolish attack. By the fall, no one in the political world will have any energy left at all.