John McCain's Latin excursion works out just fine, thank you very much

As John McCain prepared for his jaunt to Colombia and Mexico, The Times' Mark Barabak was among many writing stories wondering about the trip's political efficacy. As Barabak so nicely put it: "For starters, and most obviously, there are no electoral votes to be had in Latin America or Canada, another country McCain recently visited."

On ABCnews.com., Rick Klein was more pointed. Noting that McCain picked the Colombia stop to spotlight his commitment to fight the flow of drugs into the U.S., Klein wrote: “Maybe this is huge with conservative voters and I’m missing something, but I had Nancy Reagan flashbacks. With the economy teetering, $80 SUV fill-ups, and two real wars, this is what McCain has chosen to spotlight in a foreign trip, four months before Election Day? Just judging from the polls -- shouldn’t he be a little more concerned with the price of gas than the price of cocaine?"

Nor were journalists the only ones asking such questions (the Swamp has a recap too). For some Republicans, the sojourn epitomized their concerns about muddled messages and ill-conceived scheduling by the McCain camp -- criticisms that helped spur a staff reshuffling.

And then one of life's truisms intervened: It's almost always better to be lucky than smart.

McCain was on-site when the Colombian government pulled off a daring, ripped-from-the-pages-of-a-Hollywood-screenplay rescue of hostages held by a rebel group. McCain, in fact, got treated as if he already were in the executive branch of the U.S. government, receiving a top-secret, pre-raid briefing.

There were lots of comments about the advantageous timing for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, but the best line we saw came from this post at ABCnews.com by Karen Travers and Gregory Wallace: "McCain spends 24 hours on Colombia soil, hostages are rescued. (It sounds almost like a Chuck Norris Interweb fact...)."

-- Don Frederick

Photo: EPA

Lindsey Graham finds path to nomination -- sink John McCain's boat

We've known for a while that Lindsey Graham and John McCain are something of political soul mates, as well as Senate colleagues. But a one-liner from Graham a little while ago makes us wonder (not too seriously, or deeply) whether he harbors secret ambitions.

Graham and Joe Lieberman are traveling with McCain on his two-country tour of Latin America, but this morning were shunted to the press boat (think of kids and the small table at Thanksgiving) for a tour by the entourage of the Port of Cartagena. McCain was in another vessel -- a faster, drug-interdiction speedboat called the Midnight Express (which for the moment could have been called the Straight Talk at Midnight Express).

The press boat chugged alongside McCain's boat for about 10 minutes as the presidential candidate and his wife, Cindy McCain, were briefed by port officials. Then both boats cruised out to open water, where they separated a bit. Graham, hopefully out of earshot of the Secret Service detail, pointed across the waves to McCain's craft and said, "Sink that boat!"

He then added: "I could get the nomination if you sink that boat."

A reporter asked if the comment was on the record, and Graham said no (sorry, senator, but nothing is off the record with pool reporters along). Graham also suggested the two boats play a little chicken.

Lieberman? Not so quippy -- he just occasionally waved at McCain during the 15 minutes at sea.

-- Scott Martelle

Photo credit: Associated Press

Bloggers arrange for arrest of Barack Obama accuser

We almost wish we were there to see this happen.

-- Scott Martelle

Top of the Ticket, the start of Year Two

On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.

Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.

Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.

In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.

His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.

His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.

Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."

Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.

The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.

Hillary Clinton was the clear front-runner; Barack Obama was just as clearly ...

Boy, why all the speaking gaffes by Geoff Davis and others now?

Have you ever been at, say, a football game and you notice the TV camera turn toward the crowd in Section 14?

And suddenly what seemed like a fairly normal group of people -- except for the two fat guys with no shirts -- turns completely bonkers: waving, displaying ESPN signs, pointing to their sweatshirts, holding up one finger (no, the forefinger) and yelling things that no one will hear because there's no microphone within 50 yards?

That kind of disease must be spreading these days to those people who are handed a microphone. There's something about holding one of those electronic voice-amplifiers in your hand and looking out at a political crowd that turns on the stupid lobe in many a frontal cortex.

We've had so many examples this election season of folks whose egos seem to get amplified instead of their IQs. And they come out with amazing words that the immediate crowd might cheer. But pretty soon, thanks to the Internet and blogs like this, their words get read or heard by others.

And they find themselves apologizing in very embarrassing circumstances.

The latest is Geoff Davis, a Kentucky representative few beyond Paducah ever heard of until today, when his Saturday night....

Mark Penn holds forth

The personnel change in the the day-to-day management of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign hasn't slowed down her main spinmeister, who just moments ago issued his latest memo making the case for his candidate over Barack Obama in the Democratic race.

Some might see that as a tougher argument for Mark Penn to sell at the moment -- given Obama's decisive wins in the weekend's series of nomination contests, as well as recent polls showing him running a bit better than Clinton against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. But Penn, responsible for plotting strategy for Camp Clinton, will have none of that.

He resists, in his new memo, specifically using the word "cocaine," which embroiled him in a mini-tift late last year. But his contention is of a piece with the dispute that revolved over Obama's youthful drug use: Clinton has been about as thoroughly vetted as a politician can be while her rival is about as fresh-faced as they come, for a national race. As a result, the famed GOP attack machine would have a field day ripping Obama apart.

He also asserts that ...

Oops, Obama was for decriminalizing marijuana before he opposed it

Here's that uncomfortable old video problem again for presidential candidates.

The Washington Times has unearthed a video of a debate in Barack Obama's initial Illinois campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004. The debate tape from Jan. 21, 2004, at Northwestern University shows Obama proclaiming the war on drugs an "utter failure."

"We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws," he said to scattered applause. "But I'm not somebody who believes in legalization of marijuana. What I do believe is that we need to rethink how we're operating in the drug war. Currently, we're not doing a good job."

OK. Fine.

But then in a Democratic debate last fall, Tim Russert asked all the party's candidates if anyone disagreed with Sen. Chris Dodd's idea to decriminalize marijuana. Obama, standing center stage, was one of several candidates who raised their hand, albeit not very high.

An Obama spokesman told the newspaper the other day that the senator has "always" favored decriminalization as he said in the 2004 debate, meaning he mistakenly raised his hand as an opponent for the national TV audience.

A spokesman for the campaign of Hillary Clinton, Obama's sole remaining Democratic opponent, said she opposes decriminalization. Both videos are available here.

-- Andrew Malcolm