An Obama mistake? He must just be tired

It's incredible -- the left just can't bring themselves to criticise Obama. There's always some excuse, some reason why his 'lack' of judgment is actually just a 'lapse' in judgment. He also seems to start every single day with a clean slate. Gail Collins' op-ed piece in the NY Times is a shining example of how even the slightest of criticism requires a description of what should've happened (also a de facto excuse for what did), some retaliatory scorn towards McCain (it used to be Hillary), and then the obvious reason why such an momentary error could actually occur:

So far, not so bad. As Obama pointed out, you cannot really expect a presidential candidate to set up a committee to vet the people who are going to be on the vetting committee. Although you can bet that by 2012, that will become standard operating procedure.

But there’s all this other stuff. Johnson is the former head of Fannie Mae, which under his direction, according to regulators, engaged in accounting practices that were, at best, sloppy. At the same time, he sat on the boards of five different corporations, where he appeared to serve as cheerleader for the theory that corporate executives deserve to be paid obscene amounts of money.

Yeah, fair enough, except it doesn't require a vetting committee to find out about Johnson -- in this instance, a google search would have sufficed.

Here comes the attack on McCain for having the audacity to say what the entire Democratic party was secretly thinking:

When Johnson quit on Wednesday, the McCain headquarters issued a statement saying that the fact that he had been selected in the first place raised “serious questions about Barack Obama’s judgment.” This does not seem like a great avenue of attack for a campaign in which a large chunk of the top staff was recently dismissed for being lobbyists.

Perhaps in an attempt to differentiate the cases, the McCain spokesman said: “America can’t afford a president who flip-flops on key questions in the course of 24 hours.” Under a McCain presidency, the bleeding would presumably go on for weeks and weeks before the inevitable occurred.

Although McCain has, so far, not demonstrated that he can manage anything more challenging than a backyard barbecue, that still does not make the Johnson story look any better.

I love it. McCain suggests that it was bad judgment, which it was, and which everyone (even she) agrees on, and yet she has to get in a few cheap shots to soften the blow and deflect some of the embarrassment from the now interminable Obama-gaffathon.

But it's okay, there's no need to get depressed because he was really just tired:

Rather than falling into complete depression at such an early point in the game, let’s work under the assumption that the people involved were so tired that they didn’t know what they were doing.

Just before the final primaries, I was in South Dakota talking to George McGovern, who is the gold standard when it comes to disastrous vice-presidential selections. If Obama ever asked him for advice, McGovern said, he’d tell him to avoid exhaustion.

(...)

One ridiculous decision doesn’t mean that Obama won’t be a good candidate.

But it does suggest that he needs to take a long nap.

I agree, actually, one ridiculous decision doesn't mean that Obama won't be a good candidate, but we're not on the first ridiculous decision, we're on about the 25th (note: visit the blog Obama's Gaffes to keep a more accurate score). The sad fact of the matter is that if Obama were a Republican, his campaign would already be over -- ordinarily you can't run for President with this kind of an error rate. And if this kind of thing continues, which it will, how much mileage can his supporters really expect to get out of the 'he-must-be-tired' assumption/excuse?