Just one month after airing an ad declaring "only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war," John McCain once again joked about creating carnage in Iran. On the stump Tuesday, McCain added killing Iranians with cigarette addiction to last year's musing about "bomb bomb Iran." Whether he's yukking it up over conflict with Tehran, following Osama Bin Laden to the "gates of hell" or just being the "worst nightmare" of Al Qaeda and Hamas, John McCain sounds more and more like the man he seeks to replace.
McCain's latest less-than-presidential performance came in response to a question about rising U.S. exports to Iran. Informed that those shipments include $158 million in cigarettes:

McCain said, "Maybe that's a way of killing them." He quickly caught himself, saying “I meant that as a joke” as his wife, Cindy, poked him in the back.

In his defense, McCain claimed he was merely being ironic "as a person who hasn't had a cigarette in 28 years." Needless to say, the ironies don't end there. Despite his failed 1998 effort to advance anti-smoking legislation opposed by the tobacco lobby in the Senate, John McCain brought on Big Tobacco lobbyist Charlie Black to lead his campaign. (That might also explain why McCain backed off supporting Ted Kennedy's bill to have the FDA regulate tobacco and voted against raising cigarette taxes by 61 cents a pack to fund an expansion of SCHIP.) And despite John McCain's call for global divestment from Iran, the lobbying firms of top McCain aides Black and Rick Davis include clients doing business with Tehran.
The bigger irony, of course, is that John McCain is undermining his own effort to put distance between himself and George W. Bush. McCain's June ad was a dig at Bush's "cowboy way" typified by belligerent, teenage age taunts like "dead or alive," "bring 'em on," "I'm a little envious," "kick ass" and "we're smoking them out." Yesterday's pathetic episode was just another invitation to voters to view John McCain and President Bush as two peas in a pod.
Ultimately, even the perpetually unapologetic George W. Bush recognized that "using bad language like, you know, 'bring them on' was a mistake" which raised doubts about his presidential temperament. As for John McCain, who giggles about bombing - or at least smoking out - the Iranians, we're still waiting for a similar acknowledgement.
Until then, expect more messages like the one John McCain delivered last October to workers at a small arms factory in New Hampshire:

"I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products."