Who Woulda Thunk?

Even as recently as 24 hours ago, who would have thought that President George Bush would prove to be, at least for the moment, John McCain's most effective campaigner? When you can get Joe Biden to go "off his meds," forcing him to retreat to "malarky," you just have to smile.

Like Glen Reynolds, who himself had "a fun take" on the issue, I must say, "Heh!"

I'm waiting for someone -- anyone in the MSM to acknowledge that, for his comments, Bush received a "Standing O" from the entire Knesset. Even Fox News channel played only a few seconds of the applause following the comment. And in their story, CNN arbitrarily cut it off at the end of his comment -- they played none of the applause track at all.

(Update: 05/16)

If you watch the entire video posted at ABC, you can see that that deliberate CNN edit actually distorted the coverage of his speech.

Here is the original ABC News blog post by Ed O'Keefe at Political Radar, which linked to the video of Bush's remarks to the Knesset. There are over 1,500 comments on that post at the ABC website already.

Fom a political perspective, Obama and Biden were not the only dupes here. Nancy Pelosi also promptly hoisted herself on her own petard with her fustian comment (also posted about at The Crypt) calling Bush's remarks "beneath the dignity of the office." That, of course, only served to remind everyone of her looking silly in Syria, wearing that babushka-style burqa . . . or was it a hijab?

And John Kerry jumped in as well. Last night Fox showed a clip of him claiming that Republicans were trying to "raise the flag and waive fear . . ." whatever that means. Hillary also chimed in that the remarks were "offensive and outrageous" apparently oblivious of the very warm reception those remarks received in the Knesset. And, coincidentally that is the exact same phrase she used recently to describe the comments of Jeremiah Wright.

Today Obama himself continued to show his defensiveness over being politically snookered.

Fox News Channel reports that Obama is trying to go on the offensive in South Dakota by accusing both the President and McCain of "fear-peddling" and "exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s dividing our country and that alienates us from the world."

Again, neither he nor Hillary nor any of the critics make any mention of the warm applause and the "Standing O" Bush received in the Knesset for his remarks.