Over on the home page, I’ve got a piece on the road ahead for McCain. One section is even more relevant than I realized when I wrote it:

And McCain’s people know that part of the price of that format is the inevitable off-key answer, such as the candidate’s impromptu parody of the Beach Boys, “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.” At the time, the crowd laughed; today liberal bloggers insist it is ipso facto evidence that he is Dr. Strangelove.

Of course, it’s not just liberal bloggers, for whom we have the soft bigotry of low expectations. This weekend on Meet the Press:

MR. SHRUM: What’s happening here is a competition between biography and policy. John McCain, as biography, is not George Bush, doesn’t look like George Bush. He’s a maverick, people think he’s different from George Bush. On the great issues before the country–Iraq, Iran, where he said, “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”–he is very close to George Bush, in fact maybe more extreme.

Of course. Ignore McCain’s foreign policy speeches and statements outlining his policy vision on Iran here, here, here, here and here; the man would obviously choose to chart a course of state because it sounds like the lyrics to an old Beach Boys song. Had the song been “Barbara Maria” I suppose Shrum would contend that the McCain White House policy aim would be “Bomb Korea.”

The left is going to bring up McCain’s joke again and again, and insist that it’s some sort of declaration of policy from McCain. It’s asinine, and desperate, and even 0-for-8 Bob Shrum ought to be able to come up with a better argument than this.