No, Joe Klein, John McCain Isn’t A Liar and You Owe Him a Public Apology.

I don’t often link to the Huffington Post but today I’m going to make two exceptions. Today, there’s an awful lot of strutting and high-fiving over a supposed foreign-policy gaffe that John McCain made. Here’s the “gaffe” in a nutshell:

It seems the only way the neoconservatives are able to attack Barack Obama’s foreign policy proposals is to exaggerate and misrepresent them.

The evidence? On Friday, I promised to check into whether Obama had ever said that he would negotiate–specifically, by name–with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, according to the crack Time Magazine research department and the Obama campaign, he never has.

Just remember that last little bit: “..he never has”. Joe Klein is, in no uncertain terms, calling John McCain a liar. He even went out of his way to go to a McCain presser to pin him to the wall on the lie.

Then, Klein and the HuffPuffers decided to spin the alleged lie into a larger indictment of McCain’s foreign-policy knowledge. They contend that Mad Mahmoud is in fact not the leader of Iran but that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei (the Mullah’s lead man) is really the leader and that’s who Obama was really talking about – the leader and not Ahmadinejad.

Yes, well, Klein may have a point, though it is a very small and technical one. According to the Iranian Constitution, Khamenei has more power than Ahmadinejad in that he has the final approval power over foreign and domestic policy. However, when was the last foreign leader you saw negotiating at all with Khamenei? Even the head of Hezbollah, whose money comes from Tehran, meets with Mad Mahmoud and not the Supreme Leader. Mad Mahmoud is the one who speaks before the UN, cuts deals with allies, carries out diplomacy, and makes the foreign policy threats that Hezbollah and other paid mercenaries then carry out. So while it is true that Khamenei is the de jure leader of Iran, it is also true that Ahmadinejad is the de facto head. Trying to ding McCain on that point is splitting a hair so fine that it makes Klein and the HuffPuffers look ridiculous to everyone except their syncophants.

However, if Klein is really intent on dumping all over Johnny Mac for this, he will, if he’s honest, dump all over his guy Obama, too. Michael Goldfarb, without much effort, found this video wherein Obama talks about meeting with our enemies. He names Ahmadinejad three times clearly as one of those leaders with whom we need to meet and he doesn’t mention Khamenei at all. Not only does this prove that John McCain was not lying, it shows that Obama is guilty of the same alleged gaffe as McCain. The video manages to kick both legs from under Klein’s gotcha and it makes him look a right fool.

So, now what? Klein was wrong, and not by a little bit. He made a bold assertion that a video has proven not to be true.

Will he issue a similarly sneering condemnation or appear at an Obama press conference and pepper him with the same questions? Well, if he’s an objective journalist he will.

Will he issue a retraction and apologize for calling John McCain a liar? Again, if he has any self-respect or integrity, he certainly will.

Will anyone at the Huffington Post pimp Michael Goldfarb’s video find as eagerly as the site pimped Klein’s posts? Okay, now you’re making me laugh.

Tags: Fighting the Islamists, Joe Klein, John McCain, Mad Mahmoud, Media Bias, Newsweek