On the July 15 broadcast of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson claimed that during a July 14 New Hampshire town hall meeting, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “took questions for an hour and a half and answered them all, you know, with the same kind of candor and honesty that people come to expect from John McCain.” Later in the program, Liasson claimed that McCain “is a candidate who always says, you know, he puts principle above politics.” However, Media Matters for America has documented instances in which McCain -- whom the media have routinely described as “honest” and “authentic” -- has made contradictory statements or otherwise equivocated on a variety of issues, such as the Iraq war, Christian conservatives, ethanol, tax cuts for the wealthy, the Confederate flag, and abortion rights (see here, here, here, and here).

McCain has also made a number of dubious statements in 2007 regarding the Iraq war. As Media Matters documented, during a visit to Baghdad, McCain responded to a question from a reporter about his statement that he "could walk through" neighborhoods in Baghdad today by stating: “Yeah, I just came from one.” McCain was apparently referring to his trip to Baghdad's Shorja market, during which he and other members of his delegation were accompanied by more than 100 troops and several helicopters. On the April 8 edition of CBS' 60 Minutes, McCain admitted that he had “miss[poken]” when he declared the market safe. In addition, as Media Matters has also noted, during a June 5 GOP presidential debate in New Hampshire, McCain stated: “I am convinced that if we fail and we have to withdraw, they will follow us home. It will be a base for Al Qaeda.” McCain made a similar prediction during the May 3 GOP presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan presidential library. When he was asked what he would need to win the war in Iraq, McCain responded: “We must win in Iraq. If we withdraw, there will be chaos; there will be genocide; and they will follow us home.” Yet, as Media Matters has noted (here and here), numerous media outlets have reported assessments of a wide range of U.S. intelligence officials, security experts, and military analysts disagreeing with the view that terrorists in Iraq will attack Americans inside the United States if U.S. military forces exit Iraq.

From the July 15 broadcast of Fox News Sunday:

BRIT HUME (guest host): Well, that's one way of looking at it, I suppose, if you're Senator McCain, that the campaign is fine. But a bunch of his aides -- top aides -- bailed out this week, and the campaign is thought to be all but broke. So, whither Senator McCain? Mara, you were with him in New Hampshire yesterday for what was thought to be a major speech. How does he seem? What's going on?

LIASSON: Well, he seems fine. I mean, it was the strangest campaign trip I've ever been on. I mean, the campaign staff are just walking around shell-shocked. A lot of them are not going to be around more than one or two more days. He is out of money. This has been a spectacular implosion. I don't know of any campaign that's kind of fallen this far this fast. From front-runner a year ago -- less than a year ago -- to underdog today. But what he's going to do is go back to the beginning, go back to his roots. He's going to campaign in New Hampshire, hold a lot of town meetings, kind of face-to-face encounters with voters, which he is great at. And he was in Claremont having a town meeting yesterday morning, where he took questions for an hour and a half and answered them all, you know, with the same kind of candor and honesty that people come to expect from John McCain.

[...]

HUME: Can he ever recover, though, from the opprobrium that he brought on himself among Republicans with his immigration stance?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER (Washington Post columnist): I don't think so. But I think if the war emerges as the overriding issue, as it is, and immigration fades into the past, in some sense -- and it's going to be a dead issue now -- and it's all about the war, I think he has a chance.

LIASSON: Well, I don't know if he has a chance, but certainly the campaign that, at least, Bill [Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard] has outlined for him, it's a campaign that --

HUME: It's doable.

LIASSON: -- is doable and also something that he would enjoy. This is a candidate who always says, you know, he puts principle above politics. In this case, he did that. And you know what? Voters only reward you for that if you agree with them on a sufficient number of issues.