McCain is an Excellent Candidate and Will Make a Brilliant President

The Evidence:

1. McCain says, Monday night, on Hugh Hewitt's radio show: "As you know, there are al-Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they're moving back into Iraq." This is a Very Smart Statement by a Very Serious Foreign Policy Expert who Deserves to Be President, despite the one teensy negligible mistake of confusing Shia Muslims (Iran) with Sunni Muslims (al-Qaeda), who are actually on opposite sides of the civil conflict in Iraq.

2. McCain reiterates, Tuesday morning, in Jordan on a Very Serious Foreign Policy Tour, that Iranian operatives are "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back" and insists it is "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate." Again, a minor error, of no consequence, which certainly does not undermine his Very Serious Credentials as a Very Serious Foreign Policy Expert. I mean, it's like if he didn't know the difference between Democrats and Republicans. No biggie. His Best Friend Forever, Joe Lieberman, quickly set him straight in Jordan, anyway: "A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: 'I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda'."

3. The Very Awesome and Straight-Talking McCain Campaign assures Concerned Voters that the Senator's error was merely a slip o' the tongue: "In a press conference today, John McCain misspoke and immediately corrected himself by stating that Iran is in fact supporting radical Islamic extremists in Iraq, not Al Qaeda—as the transcript shows. Democrats have launched political attacks today because they know the American people have deep concerns about their candidates' judgment and readiness to lead as commander in chief."

4. Though Democrats noted they are, in fact, not concerned about their own candidates, but are concerned about the possibility of a full-tilt douchebag with sawdust for brains running the country, and though keen observers pointed out that McCain didn't so much "misspeak and immediately correct himself" as continually make the same mistake until his BFF Lieberman corrected him, the Very Awesome and Straight-Talking McCain Campaign has proved its mettle as a future Republican presidential administration by rewriting history and creating a new reality, which, as we know, is the foremost job of the leaders of empire.

In the summer of 2002…I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors—and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

—From Ron Suskind's "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush," October 17, 2004.

John McCain is a Very Serious Man, and he has very seriously learned the lessons of Good Leadership from George W. Bush.