McCain's 'Viagra' response  

For John McCain, memories seem to be malleable things.

Take yesterday, for example. Stumping in Pittsburgh, Penn., the Republican presidential nominee told KDKA-TV that the first thing that comes to mind when he thinks of Steel City is its football team. "The Steelers really made a huge impression on me, particularly in my early years," he said. In fact, the impression was so huge, added McCain, that when  "he was first interrogated [as a POW in Vietnam] and really had to give some information because of the pressures, physical pressures on me, I named the starting lineup, defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron mates."  "Did you really?" asked the reporter. "Yes," McCain said. "Could you do it today?" asked the reporter. "No, unfortunately," McCain said.

As it turns out (and as ABC's Jake Tapper reported this morning), there's at least one pretty compelling reason why McCain likely couldn't recite those names: according to every previous time the Arizona senator has told this story, it was the Green Bay Packers, not the Steelers, whose defensive line he rattled off for his Vietnamese tormentors. First came his 1999 memoir "Faith of My Fathers," where he wrote that he "gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line." Next was a 2005 CNN interview in which McCain again mentioned the Packers. "That was the starting lineup of the Green Bay Packers, the first Super Bowl champions, yes," he said. "But it's -- it was the best I could think of at the time." And he even cited the incident as evidence of why torture doesn't work in a recent NEWSWEEK piece: "I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse." Faced with this factcheck, the McCain campaign told ABC News yesterday that the candidate had "made a mistake."

But given that McCain's misremembering was so politically convenient--what better way to curry favor in a key swing-state city, really, than by slotting a beloved local sports squad into a moving personal tale?--it's worth recalling that the senator has claimed to have made exactly the same sort of "mistake" repeatedly in recent weeks. On Monday, for example, chief McCain surrogate Carly Fiorina told women voters that McCain has taken issue with insurance companies who pay for Viagra but refuse to cover birth control. But the pro-choice group NARAL quickly pointed out that the senator had voted not once but twice, in 2003 and 2005, against measures that would require insurers to pay for the pill. Asked about this discrepancy aboard the Straight Talk Express Wednesday, a miserable-looking McCain paused for eight seconds before insisting that he couldn't recall his votes (video above). "It's something that I had not thought much about," he said. That's on top of an incident last month in Louisiana when McCain bragged that he had "voted for every Katrina investigation"--only to have a New Orleans reporter point out that he had actually voted twice against establishing an independent "9/11 Commission"-inspired panel to probe the disaster. McCain's response? "I am not familiar with exactly what you said." The pattern is pretty clear: make a misleading but advantageous claim about your own record. When the facts disprove your story, respond by saying "I can't remember" or "I wasn't paying attention." Rinse and repeat. 

Now, senators cast thousands of votes over the course of their careers, and the decades have a way of eroding the details of even our most searing experiences. But the fact is, McCain stood to gain politically in each of these episodes--meaning he has a perception problem no matter how they're interpreted. Either his oft-repeated excuse ("cant remember") is untrue and he was actually pandering--in which case both the original crime and the coverup would seem to contradict his "Straight Talk" reputation. Or else he's telling the truth about forgetting--in which case he's creating the impression, as the New Republic's Michelle Cottle has pointed out, that a) he doesn't care about his domestic policy votes and/or b) his 71-year-old memory isn't what it used to be. There aren't any other options. Given how important his maverick brand is--and how unimportant he wants his age to be--McCain might want to come up with another response the next time he conveniently confuses his own record.