Sept. 24, 2008
How McCain Reconciles Lies With Honor
The New Republic: The Logic And Rationale Behind John McCain's New Sleazy Campaign Style
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Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., delivers a speech at the Navy and Marine Corps Stadium during his Service to America tour, Wednesday, April 2, 2008, in Annapolis, Md. (AP)
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Photo Essay Behind The Scenes Take a behind-the-scenes peek of Scott Pelley's interview with Sen. John McCain.
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Timeline McCain's Quest Mileposts in the Arizona senator's race for the GOP nomination and the presidency.
About a week after John McCain's campaign unveiled a vice-presidential nominee who incessantly boasted about her decision to turn down federal funding for a notoriously pointless bridge ("I told Congress 'thanks, but no thanks' on that Bridge to Nowhere"), the press corps began to notice that Sarah Palin had, in fact, vigorously championed the project until it was no longer tenable. Political fibs, even brazen ones such as this, are hardly unprecedented. What happened next, though, was somewhat unusual. Despite having its claim exposed in nearly every media outlet, the McCain campaign continued to assert it anyway, day after day, dozens of times in all. It was as if Bill Clinton had persisted in his claim that he did not have sexual relations with that woman even after the appearance of the semen-stained dress.
But what happened after that was even more unusual, and possibly without precedent: McCain's supporters simply suggested that the truth or falsity of their statements didn't matter. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said this to Politico about the increased media scrutiny of the campaign's factual claims: "We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it." Republican strategist John Feehery made the point even more bluntly, telling The Washington Post: "The more The New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there, and the bigger truths are: She's new, she's popular in Alaska, and she is an insurgent." Then, he added, "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."
Here we have the distilled essence of the McCain campaign's ethos: Perception is reality. Facts don't matter. McCain has presented himself as the grizzled champion of timeworn values. But the defining trait of his candidacy turns out to be a postmodern disdain for truth. How could McCain--a man widely regarded, not so long ago, as one of the country's most honor-bound politicians, and therefore an unusually honest one--have descended to this ignominious low? Part of the answer is that McCain is simply doing what works--and there is good reason to believe that his campaign's strategy of persistent dishonesty will pay dividends come November 4. But part of the explanation for all this recent dishonesty may lie, oddly enough, in McCain's legendary sense of honor.
No presidential candidate has ever gone through an entire election without stretching the truth. Certainly, Barack Obama is not totally innocent. Last March, Obama said that McCain "wants to continue a war in Iraq perhaps as long as one hundred years," when in fact McCain said that he would favor an indefinite peaceful military presence. (Obama was repeatedly called on this distortion by the press, and subsequently stopped saying it.) He has accused McCain of helping to permit a corporate takeover in Ohio that has led to the threat of layoffs--a literally true claim that inaccurately implies that the takeover caused the problem. He has also accused McCain of favoring nearly $4 billion in new tax breaks for Big Oil--literally true, but misleading, insofar as McCain is offering tax cuts to corporations in general, not Big Oil in particular.
But McCain's untruths, in their frequency and their audacity, defy any modern historical precedent. He has been concocting falsehoods for months on end, all of which serve a clear political purpose. Last summer, Obama--on the heels of a New York Times report that the Bush administration in 2005 had canceled at the last minute a snatch-and-grab operation targeting Osama bin Laden's lieutenants in Pakistan--pledged to follow through on any actionable intelligence against Al Qaeda. After Obama's nomination became likely, McCain--then trying to portray Obama as dangerously naïve and uninformed--accused him of having "once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan." Obama had not said anything about bombing. His speech merely conveyed his support for small, special operations missions--the types of missions, incidentally, that the Bush administration has since undertaken.
During Obama's overseas trip this summer, he called off a meeting with wounded troops at a military hospital after the Pentagon told him that the trip might run afoul of a policy against visiting soldiers in the course of campaigning. A McCain ad accused him of canceling the meeting because he learned that cameras couldn't accompany him. (In fact, the press had never been scheduled to come along.)
Just last week, McCain attacked Obama for proposing to cut defense spending. "During the primary, he told a liberal advocacy group that he'd cut defense spending by tens of billions of dollars," charged the GOP nominee. "He promised them he would, quote, 'slow our development of future combat systems.'" Actually, Obama had pledged to cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful military spending (he also favored increasing the size of the military). Worse, almost any listener hearing this claim would come away thinking Obama was proposing to cut funding for weapons systems in development. In reality, Obama had promised to slow the development of a specific project called "Future Combat Systems," a controversial program. Indeed, McCain himself had proposed eliminating this very program in July.
By Jonathan Chait
Reprinted with permission from The New Republic.
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Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 107 CommentsWell, exploremore, since you cited your source, I guess I''ll just believe you.
Oh wait, you didn''t. God, you people are hysterical!
As long as we''re just making research up, the latest study done found that John McCain is a terrorist that was actually born in a foreign country, and is secertly working for Al-Qaeda.
This statement from McCain''s campaign says it all. Makes you think about the last time the "facts didn''t matter"...the Iraq War perhaps?
Obama has been in the senate for 4 YEARS, not 143 days. Your lies just make you look like an imbecile.
But, judging from this dirty, untruthful campaign of McCain''s, I''m not too surprised you guys are stooping this low.
[Posted by pci7763 at 08:33 AM : Sep 26, 2008]
a good psychologist ... and a long term of therapy would be a good solution for your condition ... commonly known as delusion.
put down your bible ... it''s contributing to your problem.
Posted by pci7763
Big, BIG difference between pro-choice and pro-abortion....and let''s keep religion out of politics.... the president, no matter who wins, has enough to fix.
Posted by MANDALAY-BAY at 04:43 PM : Sep 25, 2008
Yes, and do you know how they succeeded? By WINNING the last two elections. You made my point precisely. You can''t do a whole lot if you don''t win.
Franks isn''t the one who sat back and watched investment banks leverage themselves to tha point that they had 30 times in debt what they had in assets.
That was Paulson and Cox.
Republicans are godless pharisees stabbing this country in the back and need to be hung by the neck until dead.
This is one gun toting Christian that says kill every one of these women hating mongrel dogs.
I spit and urinate on republicans.
They are the scum of the earth and will never know God''s grace.
Barney Frank believed the point of Fannie/Freddie is taxpayer-subsidized housing for low-income borrowers - no matter how bad their credit is. You could say about old Barney Fife: never before has one individual done so much that was so wrong, or shafted so many on behalf of so few. Now he is having a hizzy fit. Talk about sleaze!
Why don''t you tell your viewers that Obama supports U.N. policy that undercuts both the first and second amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which, if implemented in America would result in a global police state?
And explain why people who complain about police abuse and military torture should advocate disarming ordinary citizens of the world so only these groups and criminals have access to tools of self-defense, and ending free speech.
Why aren''t any of your headlines screaming about that?
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