MCCAIN'S PRESUMPTION.

It seems that McCain thinks he's already President of the United States and is sending his own "delegation" to Georgia consisting of Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Joe Lieberman. (Why not Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson? They are after all, the only Senators who could say "We are all Georgians now" and mean it literally.)

No doubt this will produce a flood of reports noting how cocky and presumptuous it is for McCain to be acting as though he is already President and should be formulating policy in response to the situation there. These reports will be almost as numerous as the stories noting that McCain does not have the authority to conduct negotiations on behalf of the United States, and that doing so deeply undermines the President's authority to conduct said negotiations since foreign governments can't be sure about where they actually stand with our own.

These will be followed by hysterical condemnations by Right Wingers about McCain overstepping his authority, much the same way as they did last year when they accused Nancy Pelosi of "conducting independent negotiations with foreign governments" on her trip to the Middle East when she simply reiterated U.S. Policy everywhere she went.

Of course, Pelosi wasn't being advised by someone who is being paid by the very government McCain is undermining U.S. relations with to look after their interests. I wonder what exactly the Georgian government thinks they've paid for, besides potentially a host of unrealistic promises McCain has no authority to make, but clearly only Randy Scheunemann and his clients in Tblisi know for sure.

-- A. Serwer