McCain campaign backs off 'cameras' charge

McCain's camp, accused in the New York Times and the Washington Post this morning of distorting Obama's canceled trip to a military hospital in German, seems to have backed off the core of the charge: That he canceled the trip because "the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras."

"It does now seem that Barack Obama snubbed the troops for reasons other than a lack of photo-op potential," writes McCain blogger Michael Goldfarb this morning, contradicting his campaign's televised ads and his candidate's statements.

But as the media swings around to contradict McCain's story, the campaign is trying to stay on offense, blaming the press for the confusion:

"[T]he initial reports were less clear," Goldfarb writes. "The early explanations from the Obama campaign were vague and contradictory, with David Axelrod blaming the Pentagon (Lynn Sweet now says she misreported and misunderstood Axelrod's statement, though she provides no further context for the quote that might change the meaning), Robert Gibbs saying Obama himself felt the trip would be inappropriate, and Scott Gration saying the Pentagon had discouraged the visit by dubbing it 'a campaign event.'"

The accurate story, which the Obama campaign never told particularly clearly because it isn't all that flattering, seems to be that they were afraid the trip would be criticized as political.