Beyond the Dome

As long as we’re smacking John McCain around for mixing up the history of the Iraq surge — the one thing he’s supposed to know about — we also need to blow the whistle on Barack Obama for mixing up his own committee assignments.

From today’s press conference in Sderot, Israel:

“Now, in terms of knowing my commitments, you don’t have to just look at my words, you can look at my deeds. Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon.”

Sorry, senator, that’s not your committee. You’re on some other ones. Foreign Relations, an assignment that is really coming in handy this week. Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Veterans’ Affairs. All very nice committees.

But you’ve never been on Banking.

Maybe he just slipped up, you might say. After all, the Iran sanctions bill the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee approved last week is similar to one Obama introduced last year. So if he’d said “my bill” — or, better yet, “based on my bill” — he would have been fine.

But when you’re running for president after three years in the Senate, and you’re still trying to convince the public you’ve got enough experience to be president, it’s generally not a good idea to sound like you can’t even remember which committees you’re on.

Once again, the bar is higher.