John McCain expects us to believe he doesn't know what Romney said about Libya killings

Sen. John McCain may not have come close to being president of the United States in 2008, but he will be president of the television news interview circuit forever. In the wake of the fatal attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, McCain has made the rounds. And while he has praised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement on the killings, that doesn't mean McCain hasn't been his usual bitter, partisan self.

McCain has avoided weighing in directly on Mitt Romney's insistence that the Obama administration's "first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks," claiming to ABC's Jonathan Karl that "I didn't even see the statement to tell you the truth because frankly I was so worried about Chris Stevens and those other Americans. I'll look at it and make a judgment but my thoughts and prayers today are with the fallen."

He's deeply interested in the attacks, doing multiple interviews about them, but hasn't heard what his party's nominee for president had to say on the subject? Yeah, right.

In the same interview, McCain was visibly uncomfortable when asked about how President Obama handled the attacks, saying "well, I, I think that as far as Libya's concerned, I, I see no, I don't know, [practically mumbling] it was fine." But that "I don't know ... fine" response and his thoughts and prayers being with the fallen in no way prevented McCain from pivoting directly from the Libya killings to ripping Obama's foreign policy, and not just on ABC. On CNN, McCain said that Obama's foreign policy is "much more troubling to me than whether Mitt Romney said the right thing or the wrong thing." On NBC's Today show, he described Obama as having "a feckless foreign policy."

McCain knows how to talk in half-sentence sound bites, that's for sure. He's worded everything so that he won't be directly quoted on what either Romney or Obama said about Libya'though he's willing to be quoted praising Hillary Clinton'and then been quotable speaking about foreign policy more broadly, attacking Obama and saying that Romney has "all the right instincts." Way to turn the killing of someone you clearly liked into a partisan opportunity, Sen. McCain!