Mr. McCain tried to shrug it off. "It is what it is," he said during a news conference at the side of former President George H.W. Bush at the Bush family home in Maine. The former president was more direct. "We're jealous is all," he said, bringing a few laughs. Although conservatives will use this as further evidence of liberal media bias, the bigger lesson for Mr. McCain is to be careful what you ask for. It was Mr. McCain, after all, who taunted Mr. Obama over his failure to visit Iraq in the past two years. Mr. McCain's campaign Web site even displayed a clock ticking off the days since Mr. Obama had last been there. Now the clock has come down and, with a vineyard of sour grapes, the McCain campaign is complaining that Mr. Obama is spending too much time overseas. You just can't please some people.
Cheer up, McCainiacs. I expect my media colleagues to bend over backward to boost their McCain coverage. We saw signs of that when Saturday Night Live lampooned the media swoon over Mr. Obama at Sen. Hillary Clinton's expense - especially after she quoted from it during a Democratic primary debate.
Yet I do not recall her complaining a bit about how the Democratic Party debates consistently drew more TV viewers than the Republican match-ups did.
Besides, in Mr. McCain's case, the undercoverage could be a blessing. Mr. Obama's trip took attention away from the resignation of former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm as Mr. McCain's economic adviser. The old friend became a liability over his comments that we have become a "nation of whiners" about the sluggish economy. It's not good to have an economic adviser who shows the bedside manner of Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
And as the world watched and waited for any slips by Mr. Obama, the first gaffe of his trip went to ... John McCain! In an ABC interview he referred to the rough "situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border." Since the two countries don't share a border, Mr. McCain's foreign affairs expertise suddenly didn't sound so good.
Of course, Mr. Obama has made slips, too. He gave the country "57 states" in one campaign stop. Even when you're hungry for attention, there are some times when you're happy to be overlooked.
Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. His column appears regularly in The Sun. His e-mail is cptime@aol.com.
