RUSH: Poor old McCain. Poor old McCain, he’s desperate, I mean, the guy cannot cut a break. We knew this was going to happen. We knew that this kind of fawning coverage for Obama was going to happen and poor old McCain, I’m actually feeling sorry for him. Do you know what happened to him? Obama had an op-ed in the New York Times last week, and everyone was just going nuts over it, just fawning over it. So McCain submitted an op-ed to the New York Times, and they rejected it. I have the letter from the editorial page op-ed editor, a guy by the name of David Shipley, who incidentally, married to Naomi Wolf. David Shipley is a former Clinton campaign operative, or Clinton administration operative, one of the two, and now the op-ed editor or one of the editors at the op-ed page of the New York Times. So McCain’s campaign submits an essay, and here’s the editorial response of the New York Times, David Shipley: ‘Thank you for sending me Senator McCain’s essay. I’d be very eager to publish the Senator on the op-ed page. However, I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written. I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft. Let me suggest an approach.’
So the opinion page editor of the New York Times rejects a submission by McCain after they publish one of Obama’s and the editor sends back a note saying, ‘let me tell you how to write it,’ and here’s what he says. ‘The Obama piece worked for me because it offered new information. It appeared before his speech. While Senator Obama discussed Senator McCain, he also went into detail about his own plans. It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article from Senator McCain would have to articulate in concrete terms how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory, with troop levels and timetables, measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate, and it would need to describe the Senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan. I’m going to be out of the office next week, but if you decide to rework the draft, please be in touch with one of my deputies. Thank you for taking the time to send me the Senator’s draft. I really hope we can find a way to bring this to a happy resolution, Sincerely, David Shipley,’ the husband of Naomi Wolf, a former Clinton campaign operative running the op-ed page of the New York Times, rejecting a McCain op-ed because it didn’t reflect what the New York Times wanted, in an opinion piece, in an op-ed opinion piece. ‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece.’
That could mean any number of things. ‘Look, we want you to respond to what Obama said and we want you to accept his premises and then write something on that basis.’ (interruption) No, no, no, no. It’s not a hoax. No, no. In fact, we were informed of this by the McCain campaign, what was it, H.R., was it Saturday? Yeah, we got the note on Saturday from them. So, yeah, he can’t catch a break out there. Poor old guy. This is just amazing to me. I’ve submitted op-eds and they’ve been rejected, but nobody ever told me to rewrite it to an opinion they wanted to agree with. (laughing) This is a presidential campaign, anybody want to talk Fairness Doctrine? It doesn’t apply to newspapers, obviously, but there it is, Senator McCain rejected because his piece did not mirror Obama’s and accept the premise or premises of Obama’s op-ed. (interruption) He could still do it, yeah. Well, no, that’s not the point. I mean, it’s not that he mirrors Obama as a candidate and so forth, it’s that what they want is for Obama’s piece to be the Rosetta Stone. They want McCain to react to that, therefore holding Obama’s piece as the Ten Commandments on foreign policy with McCain chiming in, is what they’re looking for there.
Now, Senator McCain is on television and he’s trying to talk about the surge in Iraq and a number of things, and by the way, this little flap with the prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, the conventional wisdom, he gave an interview to Der Spiegel in which the reported translation was that he supports Obama’s candidacy and that he supports Obama’s timetable of troop withdrawal from Iraq in 16 months. After this hit, the Iraqis then, ‘It’s not true, it was a mistaken translation. Der Spiegel didn’t quite get it right.’ But it wasn’t until everybody started talking about it that they said this and then the recovery on this was that al-Maliki was not picking sides in any of this and it was just a translation error. And our side, our media is trying to get the Drive-Bys to correct themselves. I’m not so sure that al-Maliki wasn’t supporting Obama. I actually think al-Maliki was, and it wasn’t until the translation was widely reported — by the way, I think the translator on this was an Iraqi. Maliki’s guy was the translator on this. So Maliki steps in it by telling the truth. You know, which is what Obama did out in San Francisco. These guys will eventually tell us the truth. We get distracted by Drive-By Media coverage, but I don’t think there’s any question.
In the rest of this interview in Der Spiegel, al-Maliki answers questions, ‘How come things are going so well?’ He gives three reasons, none of which mention the United States. Talks about his political success, talks about taking care of the central part of the country militarily and his security forces being beefed up. Not one mention of the United States, not one mention of thanks. I’m not so sure. I think this is probably purposeful, that al-Maliki was propping up Obama. Make no mistake about it. I don’t think there’s any question about it. My instincts are never wrong on this stuff.