Joe Klein is mean, Mean, MEAN!

Man, look what he writes about poor John McCain:

“The New Republic perplexes me. It has some of the best and smartest writing around. And then it allows John McCain, whose lack of knowledge about Iran is encyclopedic, to hold forth in its pages. McCain, blustery as ever, wants regime change. Amen to that. But his vague, neocolonial sense that (a) we can help bring that about and (b) that the Iranian people want us to bring it about, is debatable, to say the very least. (Add: McCain claims to want peaceful regime change; but it was two months ago that he was explicitly supporting an American attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, which he may still.) In any case, his lack of knowledge--his tendency to bloviate without thinking--can be staggering…”

Two points, here, that Klein misses.

First, McCain is in a primary fight with a hardcore bagger. It doesn't matter that McCain's opponent was voted the dumbest guy in Congress before voters gave him the boot. This is actual a virtue among the tea party set. The teabaggers think they have J-Mac just about pinned down for a dose of teabag-style justice. Poor McCain is struggling mightily against their vile ways. Undoubtedly, J-Mac thinks talking tough about Iran will help him with the Base and avoid a teabagging on election day.

Second, McCain is not particularly clever when it comes to foreign affairs. As such, he tends to outsource critical thinking on such matters to nefarious neoconservatives like Robert Kagan and other such ilk. As such, any McCain article on Iran was likely not written by him, but rather by a second or third string neoconservative from the swamps of D.C. Hell, we can’t be even sure that McCain read the article before it was published.

As such the McCain article is not surprising but rather all too predictable and tired – just like McCain.