The McCain camp is outraged at the suggestion that they may have cheated by not sequestering the candidate in Rick Warren's "cone of silence" during Obama's Saddleback appearance on Saturday night.
Their over-the-top reaction is a little ridiculous. On the other hand, McCain has a special obsession with honor generally and cheating specifically. In his first memoir, Faith of My Fathers, he writes of his father's genuinely angry reaction after his mother jokingly accused him of cheating at gin rummy:
"He reacted so strongly to the accusation, with such evident distress over the charge, admonishing her to 'never say such a thing again,' that she never did. Not even in jest."
It was McCain's fixation with the rules of fair play, I wrote last month, that fueled his strange crusade against ultimate fighting.
Meanwhile Nicole Wallace's suggestion that McCain's former POW status has anything to do with it is, of course, preposterous.
--Michael Crowley