I’ve done some initial looking into the McCain house list question — how many homes he owns, how swank they are, why he’s not sure how many he owns, etc. And the question seems more interpretive than investigative. In other words, there appears to be a relatively straightforward list of the properties the McCain’s own. The question is how to enumerate them in terms of homes, especially in cases where a single McCain estate contains several different ‘houses’. Another complexity comes in the McCain’s primary residence, the $4.7 million condo in Phoenix. In that case, McCain bought two separate condos (i.e., two homes) and combined them into one mega-home.

One group, Progressive Accountability, counts 10 homes. And for now we’re treating that as the baseline enumeration.

Late Update: The Obama campaign now has an ad up hitting McCain’s gaffe. Interestingly, in what might be a sign of the new politics, the Obama campaign decides to go with what I think is the lowest possible enumeration – a mere 7 houses. Probably this is from counting the multi-home estates as single homes. But I’m not sure.

Later Update: The house issue also puts in a new context McCain’s suggestion that you’re only ‘rich’ when you’re making an annual income of $5 million.

Getting Up In John McCain Number of Houses Update: Here’s the best list of McCain cribs I’ve seen so far.

Jake Piles on Update: Jake Piles On.

At first we thought this spread in Architectural Digest was about the ranch/estate in Sedona with the multiple homes. But it’s actually the home in Phoenix, which I think isn’t even the primary home. That’s the condo in Phoenix, which you can see here.

Late Picture Update: We thought these pictures were from the Sedona estate, but they’re from the Phoenix mansion ….

Hard to Keep Track Update: It now seems like the McCains stopped living in the Phoenix mansion in 2006 when they sold it. The place is now back on the market for more than $12 million and Inside Edition has this look at the place …

Late Memory Hole Update: The McCain campaign actually had Youtube videos up on their site of a Fox News Greta van Susteren report on the McCain Manses. But they appear now to have removed them from Youtube.

I will not stand by and watch the Obama camp try to claim McCain owns seven homes when he owns at least ten.

And Possible Veep candidate Tim Kaine earlier in the day …

McClatchy was apparently getting tired of their reputation as one of the finest print-based news organizations in the United States. So they decided to run this headline: “Obama strikes some as a pompous elitist.”

You start to see one of the reasons why there are so many different estimates of how many houses the McCain’s own when you look closer at the Sedona multi-home estate.

On the one hand, the AP reports that “includes four single-family homes and is worth nearly $1.8 million.” On the other hand, back in March McCain told CNN that he “built the first house on his property 24 years ago and now there are six houses on his lot.”

Here you can see an aerial view of the estate, which is on from 15 to 20 acres of land, depending on the report. (Click on the image to see a larger picture.)

We’re a little unclear if this covers the entire estate and which of the things there are the four or six houses. But if anyone can help us on that, that’d be great.

So one, four, six, hard to tell. Hard to remember. And that’s just on the estate. Doesn’t count the Phoenix condos, San Diego beach front houses, or McCain’s pad outside DC.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers: “The reality is they have some investment properties and stuff. It’s not as if he lives in ten houses. That’s just not the case. The reality is they have four that actually could be considered houses they could use.”

Notably, if you look at the dateline, the piece appears to have been filed from the McCain estate in Sedona.

I didn’t know there was any footage of the day the McCains hosted the DC press corps at that barbecue at their Sedona estate. But it turns out that McCain’s daughter, who blogs at McCain’s website as the ‘McCain Blogette’ put up a Youtube video of all the fun. It even includes the special moment when the Politico reporters brought Cindy McCain flowers to celebrate the event. Another interesting detail, they also show the family who serve as caretakers of the estate when the McCains aren’t in residence. Presumably they live in one of the six houses on the estate …

Special thanks to TPM Reader MS for the catch.

And special bonus, the audio of McCain forgetting how many houses he owns …

NYT squeezes off the headline of the day: “Talk of McCain’s No. 2 Concerns Conservatives“

The McCain memory/housing glut story is a lot of fun. And I suspect it will do McCain a lot of damage. But let’s not forget that there’s an even bigger story today in the presidential race — at least in terms of substance and possibly politically too, at least over time. John McCain has staked his whole campaign on opposing Barack Obama’s call for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. His very support of the notion, to McCain, illustrates his naivete and unfitness for the job of commander-in-chief. And yet today, the US and Iraq have agreed on a “timetable”, using that very word, for leaving Iraq. Reality, the Bush administration and the Iraqi government have jointly endorsed Obama’s position and left McCain a relic. Once the fun of the house story settles down from a boil to a simmer, the Obama camp must pivot off this development.