Yesterday I noted that Bill Clinton was back in the news as a result of comments he had made in a speech to a veterans' group in Charlotte, North Carolina:

"I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."

Clinton's comments made news when retired Air Force General and Obama campaign cochair Tony McPeak condemned them as McCarthyite. The AP story reporting McPeak's comments provided insufficent context for a reader to ascertain the justice of McPeak's condemnation. Kathleen Parker attended Clinton's speech and found the condemnation unwarranted:

Clinton was making the case for his wife’s electability against McCain, who last time I checked is the presumptive Republican nominee and her challenger should she win the Democratic nomination. He may have intentionally bypassed Obama in his leap to match Hillary against McCain, but he didn’t say anything that could be construed as questioning Obama’s patriotism. The sequence went as follows: He noted that Hillary polls ahead of McCain in Ohio and Florida and also that McCain leads “Hillary’s opponent” (I quit typing here and don’t recall exactly which states he mentioned in that part of his comment.) His point, obviously, was that Hillary should be the nominee and, in that case, she and McCain would face each other in the final contest.

Before he made the so-called controversial remarks, he praised McCain as an “honorable man,” who has “paid the highest price short of giving your life.” He mentioned that though Hillary and McCain disagree on many issues, they’ve worked together successfully on others. In that context, he said it would be great “if you had two people who really love this country and ask who’s right on these issues” instead of all the non-essential clutter that now distracts in politics.

This was toward the end of his talk, which focused on Iraq and the economy. Obama was no longer on the radar at this point. Bill Clinton was saying that Hillary and McCain are both good patriots who love their country, not that all those unmentioned are something else.

Parker therefore concludes that Clinton's remarks in no way impugned Obama's patriotism. ABC's Jake Tapper at least raises the question regarding the merit of McPeak's condemnation of Clinton and links to the video of the relevant portion of Clinton's speech (above).

Yet the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Seattle Times and the AFP, for example, continue simply to quote the truncated version of Clinton's stattement and reiterate McPeak's charge condemning it without providing any sense of context. This is a poor performance on the part of the press, and ineptitude may be a sufficient explanation for it. In the alternative, a disinterested observer might speculate that the press now entertains a presumption resolving doubtful issues against the Clinton campaign and in favor of the Obama campaign.

JOHN adds: This is another example of the phenomenon I noted yesterday: the Obama campaign pretends to be high-minded, but isn't.