A Day of Sadness

"Hillary Clinton won a huge victory in Kentucky on Tuesday night, and you know what happens next? Nothing probably. Nothing good. Not for her, anyway. Not if the past is prologue."

Is McCain grandstanding on Iran? Joe Klein raises the question:

"I just asked John McCain about why he keeps talking about Obama's alleged willingness to talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has no power over Iranian foreign policy, rather than Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who does. He said that Ahmadinejad is the guy who represents Iran in international forums like the United Nations, which is a fair point. When I followed with the observation that the Supreme Leader is, uh, the Supreme Leader, McCain responded that the 'average American' thinks Ahmadinejad is the boss. Didn't get a chance to follow up to that, but I would have asked, 'But isn't it your job to correct those sorts of mistaken impressions on the part of the American public?' Oh well."

McCain has another problem, says Slate's Tim Noah, as the guy who championed high-definition TV (and showed up on "Saturday Night Live"):

"As McCain cracked wise ('What do we want in our next president? Certainly someone who is very, very, very old.'), I found myself thinking, Jeez, he doesn't look like a guy who'll turn 72 this August. He looks like a guy who'll turn 82.

"For all I know, McCain is in fine physical condition. If he appears older than his chronological age, that probably has something to do with the torture he endured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam; nine years ago the Arizona Republic reported that he continued to experience 'orthopedic limitations' related to his imprisonment, including pain in his shoulders and right knee. But TV is unfair, as Richard Nixon learned when his perspiration and five o'clock shadow helped give John F. Kennedy the edge in the first-ever televised presidential debates."

I have suspected that the gay-marriage issue was losing some of its punch. When you have Ellen DeGeneres and now George Takei (Mr. Sulu) announcing they will get married, that may help change the perception of some skeptical Americans. American Prospect's Paul Waldman argues that the California Supreme Court ruling last week didn't amount to an explosion:

"The political reaction was remarkably subdued. Yes, there will be a constitutional amendment on California's ballot this November, and the campaign there will be hard-fought. But on the national level, there were no raised voices, no cries of anguish, no calls to man the ramparts -- at least none to which anyone paid much attention. All soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee John McCain could muster was a spokesperson reading from the old script, mumbling that the Arizona senator 'doesn't believe judges should be making these decisions.'

"If you didn't know all that much about McCain you might think his muted response reflects a moderation on gay issues uncharacteristic among Republicans. But you'd be wrong. McCain's position on gay marriage is that the issue should be left to the states, unless state courts confer marriage rights on gays, in which case he would favor an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning gay marriage . . .

"So why is it that same-sex marriage doesn't seem to have the political potency it did just a few years ago? Obviously, with our miserable war in Iraq now in its sixth year and the economy in the toilet, Americans have more important things to worry about. But it's more than that. We've been down this road before. It has been four and a half years since same-sex marriages were legalized in Massachusetts, and for some reason the Bay State has not descended into a perverted bacchanal, families have not been torn asunder by the destructive power of these new unions, and the bonds holding society together have not been torn to shreds. Incredibly, the prophesies of doom were wrong."

Jamie Rubin, the former State Department spokesman, tells me he's been unfairly criticized over a Washington Post Op-Ed in which he said McCain was "guilty of hypocrisy." Rubin spent the day on television, showing video of a Sky News interview he did with McCain in 2006 that, he said, conflicted with the senator's current stance against talking to Hamas.

In the clip, McCain said: "They are the government, sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations have such antipathy towards Hamas -- it is because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse to but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East, I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah never gave them that."