The honorable, if doddering, John McCain is being fooled by that nasty Internet

By Robert Schlesinger

I saw this on Hardball the other night and (as is often the case) started muttering angrily at the television (apparently I wasn’t the only one who was dumb-founded). Click and watch and make sure to follow through to the end.

If you can’t see the video, it’s Andrea Mitchell, Mike Barnacle and Roger Simon discussing the sharply negative turn the McCain campaign has taken in the last week or two. (Sharply negative? Think about this: If he’s this negative now, what’s he going to be like in late October? “I’ve read media reports that Obama is a Muslim.”?) They agree that the dive into the political gutter does not reflect the real McCain and that in fact the old senator is the hapless victim of his campaign staff, who are feeding him false information about what Obama has said and done.

On what do they base this judgment? It’s not clear. But — here’s why it’s important to watch through to the end — Andrea Mitchell places the blame on … the Internet. The rumors zinging around that awful blogosphere.

So to sum up: John McCain is being misinformed about Barack Obama by the Internet. This is the same John McCain who famously doesn’t know how to log on to the Internet.

As one smart Democrat put it to me, McCain should conclude his ads thusly: “”My name is John McCain and I probably don’t actually approve this message.”