The Gaffe Patrol

"McCain has been a media darling forever, and now he's making the claim that he's not getting enough media coverage? It's comical," says Mitchell Bard, a writer and filmmaker who blogs at the Huffington Post.

"If Obama had said the things McCain has said, the media would be all over that as an example of his inexperience: 'He doesn't even know that Iraq and Pakistan don't share a border. He doesn't even know that Czechoslovakia hasn't been a country for 15 years.' When John McCain says it, it's 'Oh, that's just John McCain.' The media have decided that McCain is a knowledgeable foreign policy expert and anything that doesn't fit into that paradigm is just ignored."

McCain's years in the Navy and frequent visits to such war zones as Iraq may well provide him with a degree of inoculation. Kevin Madden, the former spokesman for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, said it is "much harder to make the argument that John McCain doesn't know what he's talking about" because of his long experience in foreign policy.

In Obama's case, Madden said, "every single misstep magnifies his inexperience. Whereas the challenge for John McCain is that every single misstep magnifies his age. The McCain campaign is cognizant of that. He often defuses it very quickly with humor."

McCain's age has become a staple of late-night comedy shows, and the candidate sometimes plays along. He said on "Saturday Night Live" that America needs a president "who is very, very, very old." And last week he pretended to doze off when Conan O'Brien raised the subject.

But a penchant for mangling the facts is not so easily laughed off -- at least if it becomes a theme of media coverage. Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, says a critique pushed by bloggers may resonate because of concerns about McCain's age.

"For that reason, the murmurs have become louder with each additional error," Sabato says. But, he adds, "if any of us had a camera on us 24 hours a day, the list of mistakes would be longer than our arms."

Now, since I've got more room online than in the dead-tree version, some excerpts that are cited above.

Politico's Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei:

"Ironically, the errors have been concentrated in what should be his area of expertise -- foreign affairs. McCain will turn 72 the day after Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) accepts his party's nomination for president, calling new attention to the sensitive issue of McCain's advanced age, three days before the start of his own convention.

"The McCain campaign says Obama has had plenty of flubs of his own, including a reference to '57 states' and a string of misstated place names during the primaries that Republicans gleefully sent around as YouTubes.

"McCain aides point out that he spends much more time than Obama talking extemporaneously, taking questions from voters and reporters. 'Being human and tripping over your tongue occasionally doesn't mean a thing,' a top McCain official said."