North Carolina Democratic Congressional candidate Clay Aiken declined to say whether Secretary of the Veterans Administration Eric Shinseki should resign Tuesday on NBC.

The former American Idol runner-up offered a somewhat bizarre rationale, telling the Today Show because he was not in the publicly broadcasted Senate hearing and "hasn't paid attention to those details" he could not say whether Shinseki should go.

"I think we have a lot of people who are making decisions without being in the room," he said. "I'm not going to be one of those folks who wasn't in the hearing and hasn't paid attention to those details and wasn't privy to that stuff and making decisions for that."

The major Army installation Fort Bragg is in the North Carolina Congressional district Aiken hopes to represent.

Aiken also employed the vague platitude "we've got to do a better job of funding the V.A. [and] we've got to do a better job of organizing the VA."

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) blasted the implication Congress has been derelict in funding the VA last night on Fox News, noting appropriating additional funds is no good if the administration is falsifying data.

"So [when the liberals suggest] Congress just ‘nickeled and dimed them,' that's an outright lie," McCain said.

(H/T AR)