Hillary Fights On

I wonder how that would go over, given her lack of a particularly public role. But a number of women have succeeded their late husbands in Congress, including Lindy Boggs and Mary Bono.

The Huffington Post is having an impact on this campaign. First there were the "bitter" comments, and now this post (cited here yesterday) on the Rev. John Hagee's outrageous remarks about Hitler and the Jews, which essentially forced McCain to denounce him.

"After winning the backing of an influential Texas televangelist," says the Boston Globe, "presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain yesterday abruptly rejected the pastor's endorsement after more of his controversial remarks became public -- including a sermon in which he says the Nazis 'operated on God's behalf' to drive Jews from Europe to Israel.

"McCain had distanced himself from the Rev. John Hagee's anti-Catholic remarks describing the church as a 'great whore,' a statement for which Hagee apologized earlier this month.

"But the Arizona senator, who wanted Hagee's support to shore up his uncertain standing among evangelical conservatives, had not repudiated the endorsement until yesterday. 'Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them,' McCain said in a statement yesterday. 'I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.' "

McCain doesn't have a great vetting operation, does he?

The AP gives McCain a clean bill of health:

"Three-time melanoma survivor John McCain appears cancer-free, has a strong heart and is in otherwise general good health, according to eight years of medical records reviewed by The Associated Press."

Not sure why the campaign gave the wire service the records early after announcing that selected reporters would be allowed to review them (but not copy them) this morning.

The one thing I thought Democrats would leave untouched in this campaign was McCain's military service (then again, I initially thought the same thing about John Kerry's military service). But National Review's Jim Geraghty sees a pattern:

"One: 'McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit,' Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. said. 'What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.'

"Two: 'Republican presidential candidate John McCain's family background as the son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military, 'and he has a hard time thinking beyond that,' Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said Friday. 'I think he's trapped in that,' Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. 'Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous.' Harkin said that 'it's one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just how you're steeped, how you've learned, how you've grown up.' "