Enjoy the video? You’ll see it a lot around here between now and November, never fear. But don’t expect Traditional Media to feature it too much.

It’s being explained away quite easily.

Here:

Ruth Marcus: I thought that was an odd comment from Sen. McCain, and I do think that it would have gotten a lot more attention were it not coming from someone who is generally judged to have a lot of foreign policy expertise.

Got that? Because McCain is known to be a foreign policy expert, his odd comment won’t get a lot of attention.

Ruth Marcus: … Probably won’t break throught the chatter, and I agree, would be a bigger deal if the speaker had been different.

If some DFH or Democratic candidate had said something so stupid, the Village would pay attention and Americans would hear a lot more of it. But since it was the Villager-approved foreign policy expert John McCain, it won’t break through the Villagers’ chatter, as Marcus readily admits.

Mika Brezinski says that Senator McCain

had this little slip of the tongue

Except he said it at least three times that we know of, Mika.

At both Associated Press and CNN’s Political Ticker, the misstatement or slip of the tongue never even occurred:

In a March 18 article, Associated Press writer Alfred de Montesquiou reported that Sen. John McCain "voiced concern that Tehran is bringing militants over the border into Iran for training before sending them back to fight U.S. troops in Iraq, and blamed Syria for allegedly continuing to ‘expedite’ a flow of foreign fighters." Similarly, in a March 18 post on CNN.com’s Political Ticker blog, Emily Sherman wrote: "During a press conference in Amman, Jordan, the Arizona senator also said there is a continued concern that Iran may be training Iraqi extremists in Iran and then sending them back into Iraq."

Note that the CNN video completely omits Lieberman’s whispered correction to St McCain, letting his "Iranians taking al Qaida into Iran, and training al Qaida and sending them back into Iraq" foulup stand.

McCain’s error likely would have ended the campaign of a lesser candidate the Village suspected of not having excellent foreign policy credentials. But these credentials have been bestowed by Villagers upon McCain. Therefore, his credentials excuse the error. There’s no reason to expose Americans to repeated viewings and endless on-air discussion of McCain’s error.

His foreign policy credentials make the error not simply forgivable but also erasable. The error calls into question his foreign policy credentials, and the Village doesn’t want to expose America to that. Because the error might call into question McCain’s foreign policy credentials, as well as the Village’s decision to bestow them, the error simply did not happen.

And this, my friends, is how the media’s campaign to coronate John McCain will unfold.