In today's New York Times, McCain senior advisor Mark Salter has managed to encapsulate GOP incompetence and bitterness in one short paragraph.

Elisabeth Bumiller, covering the McCain campaign hanging with Bush 41 in Maine, noted the Mav's en passant frustration with his limited press coverage, and then reported this.  (Emphases mine.)

Mr. McCain’s comments were mild compared with the bleak mood and frustration on the part of his advisers, who have taken to referring to Mr. Obama sarcastically as “The One” and railing against the large amount of coverage Mr. Obama is receiving compared with Mr. McCain.

“There is nothing you can do about it,” said an acerbic Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers, while standing at the back of a modest crowd assembled to hear Mr. McCain speak at a picnic in South Portland, Me. “ ‘The One’ went to Europe and homage must be paid.”

First, I must apologize to Senator McCain.  I thought the aversion to geography was limited to the GOP candidate, whereas it appears that the entire McCain campaign is devoid of any Rand McNally publications.  Obama hadn't set foot in Europe at the time of Salter's comments.

Second, let me see if I understand this correctly.  The McCain campaign, aided and abetted by outlets like Fox News and the Washington Post, repeatedly complained about Obama not going to the Middle East "to see the situation on the ground". 

Now that Obama has gone to the Middle East, complete wtih Nouri al-Maliki and Bush 43 (AKA the Duke of Hazzard) moving toward Obama's timetable proposal (leaving McCain as the old man out), the Republicans are upset that he's being covered.  Waaaaaaaaaaaa!

The constant "bait-and-bitch", old-school attacks might work in most other years - but apparently, they've learned nothing from another candidate who spent months trying to do the same thing to Obama.

I always thought the standard Republican line was that Democrats were the whiny wimps.  I'm no press flack, but it seems to me that Salter & Co. are being overpaid,  because McCain's photo ops, scheduling and scripting have been nothing short of amateurish.  I could screw up his campaign for a fraction of what Salter makes.

As I've asked many times before:  If people like Mark Salter and Randy Scheunemann represent the best help John McCain can get, how in the world can he be trusted to assemble a competent administration?