THOROUGHLY MISLEADING McCAIN SPIN: WILL IT BE CALLED A FEATURE, NOT A BUG?

As John Cole and Steve Benen have noted, John McCain told two Newsweek interviewers that he deleted a line criticizing the press for not being nice enough to Hillary Clinton from the speech he gave on Tuesday night --

Newsweek: Want to back up a little bit and talk about press coverage. One of the things that you mentioned in your speech in New Orleans was that you felt that the media hadn't recognized or had overlooked some of the attributes that Hillary Clinton had brought to the race. And I wondered–

McCain: I did not [say that] — that was in prepared remarks, and I did not [say it]....

-- even though the line was actually in the speech, about forty seconds in.

The media often overlooked how compassionately [Hillary Clinton] spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans, and she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes received.

Right now the press is presenting McCain's spin just the way he wants it presented -- Politico's Jonathan Martin and MSNBC's Domenico Montanaro ran with McCain's claim despite the fact that the video shows it's flat-out wrong.

But it's the age of blogs, and soon corrections will be issued, I'm sure. (UPDATE: Here's one now.)

Ah, but then what will we be told?

Here's my prediction: We'll be told that it's actually a good sign that McCain misstated what he actually said on Tuesday. It proves that he's got more important things to think about than this awful process of getting himself elected president. It proves that he's not just some silver-tongued preener who spends too much time thinking about how he can talk you into stuff. If McCain made a mistake, it proves that he's genuine. That he's authentic. That he's real.

We'll see if I'm right about this soon....