McCain & Katrina

John McCain has been spending the last few days in and around New Orleans. Indeed, he kicked off -- formally at least -- his general election bid there yesterday. I have yet to figure out why he focused on this area for this moment in the campaign. After all, if the Republicans can't win Louisiana in November, this thing is already over.

Other reasons that he might have rethought his geography were the inevitable questions regarding Hurricane Katrina. From Eric Kleefeld at TPM:

During his press conference today in Baton Rouge, John McCain declared in strong terms that he's voted for every investigation of Hurricane Katrina.

The only problem, as the DNC has been pointing out to reporters, is he voted twice against Democratic proposals to investigate the levee failures.

After a local reporter at his Baton Rouge press conference asked why he voted against forming a commission to investigate the levee failures in New Orleans, McCain insisted that he supported every investigation -- and added that he was "not familiar" with what the reporter was talking about[.]

McCain voted against establishing a commission to investigate the levee failures, in a September 2005 party-line vote in which all Republicans voted against the Democratic proposal. He then repeated that party-line GOP vote against a similar Dem proposal in February 2006.

Note that TPM has video of the exchange at the original link.

Note that a reporter actually asked McCain a tough, valid question. That never happened during the Republican primary campaign. It gives me hope that some of the press might actually do its job.

The best part is the e-mail that the McCain campaign sent to TPM about the incident in question. Somehow, they have morphed the press asking a question into Obama asserting the facts as a smear campaign. What fun!

"It doesn't bode well for Senator Obama's pledges to run a campaign of hope and change when on the first day of the general election he's launching the same tired negative attacks that the American people are so sick and tired of. As Sen. McCain said, he wasn't familiar with the specific votes the questioner was asking about. Instead he was speaking to his strong support for the Homeland Security Committee's comprehensive, bipartisan investigation of Hurricane Katrina, which was already fully underway when these other proposals were suggested."

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4 June 2008