Pre-Fourth campaign news: lots of fireworks, little meat

My colleagues at Yahoo News and the Associated Press bring you this blockbuster in time for the holiday weekend: Americans would rather have Barack Obama than John McCain at their summer cookout.

Yes, an online sample of 1,759 adults crowned Obama the weenie-roast king, 52% to 45%. With all the drivel fouling the campaign trail of late, I’m surprised the preferred barbecue guest wasn’t “Neither.”

They don’t have do-overs in the campaign season. But if they did, this is a week that would merit one.

There was no real news -- just barely news and almost news. The mainstream media avoided some of it. But the rest found a place, partly because the Internet always has room, partly because the candidates are always ready to fill it.

On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee gleefully headlined a report on staff changes at the top of the McCain campaign “Turmoil Part Deux.” Mainstream news outlets love these who’s-up-who’s-down stories. And they voraciously chewed over the ascent of a new campaign manager and the demise of the “regional campaign manager structure.”

Recall, if you will, the last time the press got all breathless about a McCain staff shake-up. The candidate went on to win enough delegates for the Republican nomination.

A day earlier, the Republican National Committee offered an even more insubstantial bit of chaff. Displaying conflicting headlines from the Associated Press and Politico.com, the Grand Old Party implied that Obama was double-talking on faith-based programs.

In fact, the accompanying stories, which the Republican operatives did not bother to display, showed no disagreement. Obama had not double-talked. He merely flummoxed those who want to pillory him as a godless liberal when he embraced government support for church-based social programs.

But the news-you-didn’t-really-need-to-know prize this week goes to Wesley K. Clark’s “attack” on McCain’s service in Vietnam.

The retired four-star Army general was on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, when host Bob Schieffer questioned him about his contention that McCain was “untested and untried.”

Clark first offered that McCain was a hero for enduring 5 1/2 years in Vietnamese prisons. But when pressed by Schieffer, Clark said: “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

Sure, the onetime presidential candidate was playing politics. But was he denigrating McCain’s service, as the candidate’s handlers and war buddies would insist for three days running? Hardly.

Only a couple of wing-nuts have twisted McCain’s remarkable prison odyssey -- which included his willingness to endure torture rather than accept early release -- into anything negative.

But McCain’s military service -- including his time at the Navy War College, his later command of a Navy squadron and his long history with military affairs in the Senate -- cannot and should not be off limits any more than Obama’s lack of similar experience.

Reporters may not have been thrilled with that story. But could they really lay off it when a would-be president and his staff talked about it for three days on end?

The McCain camp has, by no means, cornered the misplaced-indignation market.

It was less than two weeks ago that Obama’s people got all in a lather when McCain advisor Charlie Black was quoted in Fortune magazine saying another terrorist attack on U.S. soil would be a “big advantage” to the Arizona senator.

Never mind that polls and political pundits have delivered essentially the same message. We had to endure the Obamans’ outrage at a statement they called a “complete disgrace.” Black and McCain promptly apologized.

Again, the press seemed to have no choice but to faithfully record the tit-for-tat.

It would be nice to think the “blah blah blah” of early summer campaigning might be on the wane. But as of Wednesday afternoon, no such chance.

Yes, the nefarious “fist bump” controversy reappeared.

It began a few weeks back when Obama and wife Michelle exchanged a playful knuckle knock on-stage after a breakthrough victory. A dimwitted Fox News anchor suggested some might see that as a “terrorist fist jab.”

The story inadvertently got new life this week when a Los Angeles Times reporter at an Ohio campaign event filed a pool report (intended for use by journalists who can’t fit into smaller venues) saying that Obama declined to bump fists with a young boy.

Actually, it only appeared that way from behind a rope where journalists were held, mostly out of earshot. It turned out that Obama told the boy only that he wouldn’t autograph his fist, concerned that his mother might not like it.

It all would have died quietly, but New York Times uber-columnist Maureen Dowd got hold of the pool report. And she cited the allegedly spurned fist bump as evidence that Obama has tied himself in knots to appear “conventional.” A correction ensued.

Thank goodness that’s clarified. Now we can all enjoy the Fourth of July holiday.

Let’s banish even the thought of that shared barbecue. The campaigns, the media and the voters could all use a breather.

james.rainey@latimes.com