IF THIS HAPPENED TO CLINTON OR McCAIN

Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic and, apparently, every Obama-bashing blogger in the English-speaking world have preemptively declared a double standard after Obama slipped up and said he'd been to "57 states."



Says Ambinder:

But if John McCain did this -- if he mistakenly said he'd visited 57 states -- the media would be all up in his grill, accusing him of a senior moment. Just saying....

Er, no. Bloggers would be after him. The press wouldn't. But in any event, McCain would immediately book an appearance on Letterman and read a Top Ten List in which the applause would be the greatest for the "57 states" joke. Chris Matthews, watching the Letterman clip, would reenact the cafe scene from When Harry Met Sally, but not faking it. End of mini-crisis.

Obama will start joking about this too. The press will back off. Alas, it won't stop the 87 billion spam e-mails that will be sent between now and November explaining that Obama doesn't know how many states there are because he's a madrassa-bred Muslim who took his oath of office on a Koran.

If this happened to Hillary Clinton, by contrast, she wouldn't joke about it. She'd declare that arugula-eating elitists want to stop the contest before states 51 through 57 get to vote, and she won't let them. Bill, in a one-stoplight town, would say, "Don't you ever let them tell you there are only 50 states in this country," while wagging an index finger and turning beet red. We'd be told that internal polls show Barack Obama is near 0% in the polls in those 7 states -- more evidence that he simply can't win in November. Lanny Davis would be dispatched to every cable news operation and the Huffington Post, where he'd describe "the 50-state myth" as the sinister work of egghead geographers. Howard Dean, Al Gore, the Edwardses, and Nancy Pelosi would ineffectually wring their hands.