Charlie Black: Overly Candid

In case you missed it, John McCain's chief campaign strategist said that another terror attack on the United States would benefit McCain.

What boggles my mind about the fallout over his comments to Fortune Magazine is that they seem to be much more about him saying it rather than being about him meaning it. His apology doesn't disown the comment:

Black, interviewed by reporters as he stood outside McCain's fundraiser, said: "I deeply regret the comments. They were inappropriate. I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its security before every other consideration."

If this weren't so colossally boneheaded I might think the quote was an intentional plant, meant to prime the thinking of the swing voter to lean towards a McCain/Security preference. But this is just too dumb to have been the idea of more than one person, too dumb to survive in the wild. I don't doubt that Charlie Black meant what he said, and I would wager that there are plenty of people on the campaign that buy the same line. But this sort of thing doesn't make it out of the average communications strategy meeting.