McCain loves to portray himself as an expert on all things Israel. Except, of course, that he's not. NBC:
When McCain made a foreign policy gaffe in Jordan on Tuesday, it was Sen. Joe Lieberman who quietly pointed out the mistake, giving McCain an opportunity to correct himself in front of the international press corps. In Israel yesterday, NBC's Lauren Appelbaum reports, Lieberman once again intervened when McCain made an incorrect reference about the Jewish holiday Purim -- by calling the holiday "their version of Halloween here."McCain made the incorrect statement during a press conference with Defense Minister Ehud Barak after touring the Israeli city of Sderot to view buildings damaged by Hamas rocket fire. McCain was discussing the numerous rock attacks on the city. "Nine hundred rocket attacks in less than three months, an average of one every one to two hours. Obviously this puts an enormous and hard to understand strain on the people here, especially the children. As they celebrate their version of Halloween here, they are somewhere close to a 15-second warning, which is the amount of time they have from the time the rocket is launched to get to safety. That's not a way for people to live obviously."
Purim is not the equivalent of an Israeli Halloween, Appelbaum notes. The holiday -- although a joyous one -- commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from mass execution. When Sen. Lieberman had a chance to speak at the press conference, he placed the blame of the mistake on himself. "I had a brief exchange with one of the mothers whose children was in there in a costume for Purim," Lieberman, who is Jewish and celebrates the holiday, said. "And it's my fault that I said to Senator McCain that this is the Israeli version of Halloween. It is in the sense because the kids dress up and it's a very happy holiday and actually it is in the sense that the sweets are very important of both holidays."
"Could I just say that I understand this is the holiday of Hadassah, otherwise known as Esther," McCain later said. Those in attendance quickly made light of the mistake.
McCain's mistake wasn't a big deal. But what is interesting, Appelbaum points out, is Lieberman's role during this trip. In two days, Lieberman has intervened twice in front of the press -- once helping McCain with a correction on Sunnis/Shiites and once putting the blame on himself regarding the description of Purim.
Granted, this wasn't a huge mistake, but that's not really the point. McCain's myth is that he is an expert on the Middle East. The reality is that he is not. A true expert on Israel would know and understand Jewish holidays. McCain does not. A true Middle East expert would know the difference between Sunni and Shia extremists. McCain does not. And yet, as Glenn Greenwald points out, time and time again members of our media write it off as if it is no big deal. They have all decided that he is an expert, so any mistake he makes simply must be an unimportant mistake. They have decided, all actual evidence notwithstanding, that he is an expert, so rather than see these mistakes as evidence of his ignorance, they play them down and write them off as something else. Even Ana Marie Cox, whose work I often admire, falls for this nonsense, excusing McCain's continued ignorance by stating things like "he hadn't had his fifth cup of Starbucks today."
I'm sorry, but true experts don't need 5 cups of coffee every day to avoid making repeated, consistent mistakes about very basic factual matters in their own supposed areas of expertise. And I say this as someone who drinks 5 cups of coffee every day. Am I at my best before I've had my Dunkin? No. Would I still know the difference between Sunni and Shi'a extremists before hitting up Dunkin? Of course. And I'm not even an expert on foreign policy!
Today's gaffe might be small and inconsequential, but it is part of a much larger and much more important pattern. The president need not be an expert an all things, but he or she must be an expert on at least those thing in which he or she claims expertise. Without that, what is there?
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