John McCain is no student of history and the press doesn’t care

From the New York Times:

WESTPORT, Conn. – When Senator John McCain was asked here this afternoon how he plans to balance the budget, he said that he hoped to do so by stimulating economic growth – and approvingly cited the example of President Ronald Reagan.

There was one thing he did not mention during his response: the deficit nearly tripled during the Reagan presidency, partly due to tax cuts and increases in military spending.

Mr. Straight Talk, eh? Either McCain is lying his ass off or utterly clueless of Reagan’s legacy. In any case, the press would club mercilessly any candidate named Gore, Kerry, Clinton or Obama for such a woeful misstatement; McCain, not so much. When it comes to Saint John of Arizona, the Beltway Press just swoons, behaving less like adversarial journalists and more like Lifetime VIP members of the John McCain Fan Club.

So forget McCain, can we talk about Obama’s preacher some more?