The story of a rift between Clinton and her supporters and Obama and his supporters makes a great (and relatively easy) narrative. That’s why, I suspect, I have heard so much about the Clinton/Obama rift in recent days. But I haven’t seen much in the way of hard data to establish how significant this supposed rift is. Certainly the McCain campaign is pushing the narrative because they want to encourage a rift where it exists and create one where it does not. Fair enough, it’s more or less his job to sow discord in the Democratic Party. Maybe the Democrats can start pushing Huckabee and questioning whether McCain is a real Christian or whatever.

But it’s a little annoying to see so much of this story from the news outlets. They have this narrative in mind, they can cherry pick Clinton supporters who don’t want to vote for Obama, then they can speculate endlessly about what Obama “needs to do” to heal the rift. If Obama wins the election, they can either ignore their speculation or pick one olive branch or another as “the reason” why Obama healed the rift. If Obama loses the election, they can tut-tut about how Obama didn’t follow their wise counsel by doing enough to heal the rift. The stories are mostly content-free when you boil them down and untestable.

Speaking of post-election second guessing, Roger Simon has an article up at The Politico entitled Relentless: How Barack Obama Outsmarted Hillary Clinton. Like all of these pieces, the winners are inevitably geniuses and the losers fail to see the obvious — it reminds me of football analysis, where the winning team was brilliant and the losing team was clueless; when often the reality is that both teams were fairly evenly matched and the game was decided by a couple of bounces, inches, or dropped catches. In any event, the article describes a Clinton team that was bloated, overconfident, and not well organized. They frequently lacked a “Plan B,” and Hillary was shielded from critical analysis of the campaign. The Obama campaign, by contrast, had back up plans and, probably most importantly, understood the rules by which delegates were awarded to the candidates.

Hill Kemp brings us a scathing look at John McCain’s service record. This is part of the move, counter-move, counter-counter-move we see in campaigns. McCain can’t remember how many houses he has. Obama criticizes him for not knowing how many houses he has when so many are losing the only houses they have. McCain, somewhat unintuitively, defends against this line of attack by pointing out that he was a P.O.W. Obama supporters, seeing that the P.O.W. record is going to be used as a shield against any criticism find a need to weaken that shield. And now we’re hearing more about McCain’s pre-P.O.W. war record.

Kemp’s column discusses McCain’s suspected involvement in starting a fire on the U.S.S. Forrestal that killed 134 people. Wikipedia’s entry mentions that McCain was involved but does not single him out as culpable. Kemp’s column describes the crew members as looking for the “hotdog pilot” who “wet-started” his A-4E Skyhawk fighter jet and triggered the incident.

“Wet-starting” means pooling jet fuel in the engine before starting it to send a flash of flame out the engine exhaust. (XA4D-1 Skyhawk BuNo 137812) This was done to shake up the pilot in the F-4 fighter behind him. But in the confusion a rocket went off, bombs were dropped on the ship deck and the chain reaction disaster was underway.

Kemp’s column further cites McCain’s hasty removal from the Forrestal and posits McCain’s position as son of an admiral for getting him out of there on a helicopter that should have been carrying wounded crewmen.

I have zero background knowledge on the Forrestal and, as such, can’t yet form a good opinion on whether this is one of those conspiracies ginned up solely for political purposes and then repeated by those who want to believe it for political purposes or whether this is one of those events relegated to “conspiracy” status merely because the culpable party is connected well enough to prevent the official version from pinning the blame.

In any event, if McCain intends on using his history as a P.O.W. as an all-purpose shield; that shield will have to be weakened somehow. Looking at McCain’s non-P.O.W. service record is likely a good start since his prior performance was largely undistinguished and such career as he had seems attributable to his status as Navy royalty with his father and grandfather having been admirals.

Update The Hoosier Pundit offers a rebuttal.

I had thought the whole “sign up with Obama, get a mobile text about the V.P. nomination” promotion was a little goofy. Then, someone pointed out that, now the Obama Campaign has a nice little database of mobile numbers they can text on and around election day to motivate (primarily) young people to get themselves and their friends to the polls. Just another arrow in their quiver for maximizing the youth vote.

Not so dumb after all. And, another reason why I’m not a campaign strategist.

I’m not too excited about the Senator-Senator running combo, but I can live with Biden. He’s going to be a gaffe-o-matic, but should be fun. At least he’s a clean, articulate white guy. I’m guessing he’ll be more willing to go on the attack for Obama than McCain’s best buddy, Joe Lieberman, was to go on the attack for Al Gore.

Update The political commentariat is ridiculous. I just saw a news report to the effect of “choice of Biden is unlikely to shake up the race.” The media beast has been practically wetting itself for a week in anticipation of the Vice-Presidential choice and, fact is, no matter who the choice was, it was unlikely to shake up the race very much.

An ongoing comparison is between McCain and Abe Simpson. Then I saw another article where a pro-McCain organization is digging back to the 60s, trying to associate Obama with the Weather Underground. Then, it being early and pre-coffee, I flashed to one of my favorite Grampa Simpson quotes:

We can’t bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell them stories that don’t go anywhere. Like the time I took the fairy to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. Give me five bees for a quarter you’d say. Now where were we, oh ya. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because if the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.

My mind is a peculiar place.

Also in Obama/McCain news, McCain raised more money from Hoosiers than Obama did in July. Obama had beat McCain the previous six months. Overall, the Hoosier cash flow stands at $1,600,000 for Obama to $900,000 for McCain.

A blog entry suggesting that McCain’s extreme wealth, like Bush the Lesser’s, isolates him from the consequences of risk and, therefore, skews his judgment. The entry bags on him for playing craps, which goes a bit too far for my tastes in that I married into a craps-loving family.

Another blog post reporting that the McCains spend $270,000 per year on household staff which might be more of a political problem than the houses in that Americans get accumulating stuff, but having servants is a little weird.

McCain apparently claimed that American workers wouldn’t pick lettuce for $50 per hour because the work is too menial. $50 * 40 * 50 = $100,000 + a 2 week vacation. I think if wages were offered at that level, there would be no shortage of qualified lettuce pickers applying.

Clearly stung by the fall out from his inability to remember how many houses he had, the McCain campaign reminded everyone that John McCain was a P.O.W.

McCain campaign spokesman:

“This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War.

I think the McCain campaign may have just jumped the shark playing up the P.O.W. angle in response to McCain’s housing gaffe. This is, of course, a retread of the line McCain used against charges that he was a carpetbagger who moved to Arizona to get elected when he carpetbagged to Arizona to get elected. He goes back to this well time after time. In his first run for office a quarter century ago:

He dismissed accusations that he was a carpetbagger with a well-timed ad lib: “The place I lived the longest in my life was Hanoi.”

In this context, however, bringing up the P.O.W. angle seems forced. Certainly there is no evidence of his mythical reluctance to talk about being a prisoner. Going out of the way to remind everyone that McCain was a P.O.W. in this out of context kind of way reminds me of the jock doing the report in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure who gets flustered and blurts out “SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!”

Also, channeling Dr. Evil, the McCain camp whined that Obama lives in a “frickin’ mansion.” Presumably the adjective “frickin'” was added to distract from the qualifier “a” which is considerably less than “seven.” I’ll bet Obama won’t even have to have his staff get back with anyone to confirm that his number of houses is “one.” (Craig is going to get me for my excessive use of scare quotes.)

Oh, and now the McCain campaign declares that it will feel free to talk about Tony Rezko. Until now, McCain partisans have been awfully reluctant to mention Rezko.

Regular guy, John McCain, can’t remember how many houses he owns.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

“I think – I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain told us in Las Cruces, N.M. “It’s condominiums where – I’ll have them get to you.”

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

I know the ranting against the Obama-is-an-elitist narrative is a little bit pointless. Whatever the facts on the ground might be, the narrative has been set for a decade or more: Democrats are elitists; Republicans are regular guys. The mainstream media pundits will cherry-pick facts that fit the narratives and will ignore those that don’t fit the narrative.

Update Apparently the correct answer is “seven.”

This ad juxtaposes a house with a foreclosure sign, McCain’s uncertainty about his own houses, and a statement about how we can’t afford to have him in the White House.

Enough of the Vice-Presidential speculation already. We’ll know when we know and, even then, it won’t matter too terribly much. The only reason I’ve heard so much about it is because it’s an easy thing for the 24 hour news channels to talk about. It requires little to no research and then the channels can fill the hours with the latest gossip. Sure beats slogging through Pentagon accounting or something that might end up being useful, if dull.