So it's interesting that McCain's defense of this latest gaffe is that the media is only stating a portion of the quote.  Similarly, the other day, his campaign took umbrage with the use of brackets, or rather, they fixed on the brackets as an opportunity to say that the quote was misconstruing their meaning.  We have then, a clear modus operandi.  The McCain camp plans to pursue this tactic going forward, which is to say that common journalistic practices (brackets, ellipses, partial sentence quotes) misconstrue "meaning."

This is, of course, playing off the idea that the media is not to be trusted, that they favor Obama, that they are, oh god no don't say it...liberal!

And here's the rub.  McCain is "not" part of the great right wing conspiracy.  (We'll all know he's joined their ranks, but he is hoping to portray himself as if he hasn't.)  But he has built much of his reputation with the media by not treating them as, say, Rove does.  As the enemy.  He's made a lot of friends this way.  So how will these friends respond to this tactic.  To the implication that, in doing their job (trying to represent a person's intentions while providing a complete sentence the person didn't say), they are, in fact, not doing their job (misrepresenting the intention, or worse, purposefully obscuring it).

I worry that many journalists in the coming months will feel the need to balance the scales between one very good candidate and one very bad one.  And that, in their attempt to do this, they will allow McCain to weasel out of a lot of bad moves.  This is problematic for a million reasons.  There are not two sides to every issue,  nor are there always two valid points of view.  But most of the media-- out of fear of being called partisan (except for Foxnews which is proud of it)--believe there is, or at least report as if there is.  In short, I look for them to handicap the race.

And so I wonder if, in an effort to aid the McCain campaign, these journalists will allow McCain to play this quotation game, even though the real victims of that deception is them.