Visiting the Troops

I caught some of MSNBC's coverage yesterday afternoon and David Shuster was being shockingly forthright in pointing out that the McCain campaign's accusations about the cancellation of Barack Obama's visit to see some wounded troops in Germany were totally baseless. It seems Andrea Mitchell's got the bug too: See web-only content:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/07/visiting-the-troops/49527/ Unfortunately, my understanding of the research is that a thorough debunking of a bogus charge only very partially undoes the damage of making it. That's not to say that everyone's incentive is to say crazy lies all the time, but unless this creates a backlash against McCain that goes beyond this issue and builds a larger negative attitude about McCain being unprincipled and dishonest, the mere fact that the press is shooting down his allegations doesn't mean this can't help him at the end of the day.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/07/visiting-the-troops/49527/