Another "Momentary" Gaffe by McCain

Days Until Bush Leaves Office = 182

Barack Obama continues his overseas trip today, while John McCain continues the unending gaffe-fest that is his campaign for president. This paragraph from a story in the NY Times sums things up nicely:

[T]he images of the two presidential candidates offered a sharp contrast. In an interview on “Good Morning America” on ABC, Mr. McCain talked about securing the “Iraq-Pakistan border,” a momentary misstatement of geography. (American forces are pursuing terrorists along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border; Iraq does not border Pakistan.) His aides staged an event where he was seen riding in a golf cart in Maine with the first President George Bush, while Mr. Obama flew over Iraq in a helicopter with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American military commander.

I find it striking that the Times goes so far out of its way to soften the impact of McCain's blunder on the “Iraq-Pakistan border” by referring to it as "a momentary misstatement of geography." The only reason this, or any of the other instances in the long list of McCain's errors in understanding the world he seeks to lead, could be considered "momentary" is that once again some one who knows better (an astoundingly long list which, in this case, would include any seventh grade student with a geography textbook) pointed out to McCain that Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border. McCain's vague and uncertain grasp of the facts of foreign policy - not the nuances, but the straightforward, schoolbook facts - is ongoing, and anything but momentary.

Not that any of this should be allowed to interrupt McCain's golf game, of course. Now watch this drive.