>> No one is suggesting that McDonnell lie. <<
Exactly. If McDonnell was guilty of anything in this case, it was only a matter of his not being “slick” enough. He could have avoided the WaPo’s extremely biased and misleading headline if he had merely said something like:
“Candy, with all due respect, that’s not the issue. If an alcoholic wakes up in the morning with a terrible hangover and then takes a stiff drink of whiskey, it may give some very short-term relief from his pain. If you want to call that drink ‘help,’ you certainly may do so. But a short-term fix like this really does nothing to solve the man’s underlying problem — and in fact, it makes his long-term outlook even worse.”
Now that would have been a splendid reply!