Beyond the Dome

Congress may not be making much of a difference on the Iraq war or gas prices, but its leaders have found one thing they can do: They've become the early alert system every time John McCain or Barack Obama sticks his foot in his mouth.

Both have done so over the last two days. This morning, it was McCain, on the Today show, saying it was "not too important" when U.S. troops can return from Iraq. The important part, he said, was whether Americans are taking casualties in Iraq - citing, once again, the examples of the long-term presence in South Korea, Japan and Germany - and when they can "come home with honor and victory."

Naturally, Obama's surrogates in the Senate and House piled on.

"Unbelievably out of touch," Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic nominee, said on an Obama campaign conference call with reporters this morning. McCain, Kerry said, "doesn't seem to know a lot about foreign policy and Iraq itself." (Good thing that Kerry-McCain ticket didn't happen, huh?)

In e-mailed statements, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called McCain's comment "a crystal clear indicator that he just doesn't get the grave national-security consequences of staying the course," while House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois said McCain showed "a fundamental misunderstanding about the situation in Iraq, our strained military, and American troops and their families."

Fortunately, McCain had a couple of surrogates of his own to come to his defense in a conference call this afternoon: Independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, one of McCain's most loyal supporters on foreign policy, and Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. "It's very obvious what John McCain is saying," said Lieberman, who said the controversy was manufactured to distract from the fact that Obama has been "consistently wrong" on Iraq. Thune called the whole episode a "head fake."

Obama, meanwhile, had some answering to do for a comment he made about gas prices on CNBC yesterday. In discussing how Americans continue to consume energy as if it will never run out, Obama said he "would have preferred a gradual adjustment" in gas prices rather than the sudden spike the country is dealing with now.

That's probably not the message Democrats in Congress would like to run on right now.

"If Obama really thinks consumers ought to shoulder higher energy costs while we make the transition to alternative fuels, he should answer a simple question: how high should gas prices go? $5? $6? $10 a gallon?" House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio said in a statement.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky went local in his response on the floor this morning: "I know that Kentucky families don't need a 'gradual adjustment' to their pocketbooks. They need a solution for their pain at the pump."

If lawmakers are spending this much time reading transcripts and parsing words, it's a wonder they can find the time to not pass bills.