So says the headline on a Washington Post headline. Funny headline by another group of people who see John McCain as this hero gone wrong.
With a phony flap and a misleading attack ad, the McCain campaign sinks into silliness.
Thursday, September 11, 2008; A16
IT’S HARD to think of a presidential campaign with a wider chasm between the seriousness of the issues confronting the country and the triviality, so far anyway, of the political discourse. On a day when theCongressional Budget Officewarned of looming deficits and a grim economic outlook, when the stock market faltered even in the wake of the government’s rescue ofFannie MaeandFreddie Mac, whenPresident Bushdiscussed the road ahead in Iraq and Afghanistan, on what did the campaign of Sen.John McCainspend its energy? A conference call to denounce Sen.Barack Obamafor using the phrase “lipstick on a pig” and a new television ad accusing the Democrat of wanting to teach kindergartners about sex before they learn to read.
I promise to tell the truth always about my intention and my beliefs.
Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential candidate
Some of my fellow bloggers and pundits (the redoubtable Andrew Sullivan, for instance, Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, and Time’s Joe Klein, to name just a few) had long labored under the illusion that John McCain was a principled, deeply moral politician.
As such, they have expressed disappointment at the disgusting extent his campaign is going to vilify Sen. Barack Obama with falsehoods and smears.
They beat their breasts in wails about how this man they trusted and respected had gone horribly off-track, jettisioned ideals they knew he had for the sake of political expediency. Andrew Sullivan’s latest can be read here.
McCain is not as pure as he was in 2000, the cry goes.
Me, I never had such illusions about McCain. He isn’t virtuous now; he wasn’t then.
I’ve always seen him as a man born into a life of privilege who feels entitled to everything he’s been getting and not getting.
That’s why he sleep-walked through the Naval Academy, graduating 894th out of 899 cadets. That’s why he never took his flight training seriously, crashing four aircrafts before the fateful one that led to his five-year sojourn as a prisoner of war.
Why hasn’t anyone in the media demanded that McCain have his record as POW, including statements he made on behalf of the enemy, be declassified? Please, don’t talk to me of his heroism until his full record has been examined.
Why did McCain finally leave the Navy?
How about the family he abandoned for the younger, richer wife who financed his political career.
The reputed “straight talk,” the excessive confessions and quick contritions were borne out of the Charles Keating debacle, merely cloaks he learned to wear once he was exposed as a corrupt politician.
Once he knew he would be lauded for honesty by coming clean about being in bed with Keating, the savings and loans magnate who swindled his customers out of billions of dollars and left American taxpayers holding the bag, there was no turning back.
McCain himself confessed “straight talk” and contrition became his chief strategy for burnishing his reputation. McCain, who has copped to staying at Keating’s Bahamas vacation villa about 10 times, ran interference for Keating with regulators to make Keating’s little perfidy possible. He was astounded at how quickly he was forgiven after he confessed and immediately decided it would be his modus operandi from thereon.
He did not, however, resolve to get out of bed with gift-bearing lobbyists, or stear clear of situation that called his integrity into question. If anything, he got deeper in bed with lobbyists. There was one point this summer when he shed daily lobbyists who were his campaign officials.
He still has at least seven still in the employ of his campaign as we speak.
So, yeah, McCain did not have some Road to Damascus moment during this campaign when he had a choice and he made the wrong one. Even when he was pledging to run a clean and civil campaign, he never had any intention of living up to it.
Despite the fact that the tenor of his campaign were imposed by former Bush handlers and Karl Rove disciples, the McCain we are seeing now is the one who was always there. This is the campaign he always wanted because he knows it’s the only chance he has to win the presidency.
So, expect more of the same and, please, spare me the crocodile tears about the change that has come over McCain.
It just should not be possible that Republicans stand any ghost in heck of a chance of winning any office on Nov. 4, let alone the presidency of the United States.
Yet, here they are and here we are.
Sen. John McCain is buoyant, ascendant, barnstorming the nation, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin beaming on his arm, both confident of a romp in November.
Sen. Barack Obama, meanwhile, is beginning to rue forgoing Federal financing for his political campaign. His message of change, after being brilliantly co-opted by McCain and Palin, sound shopworn.
Bill Clinton’s eight years in office, dogged every step of the way by rapacious Republicans, ended with the nation at peace, the economy robust and in surplus. Clinton handed off to George W. Bush a stable nation on sound economic footing. The question was what to do with the surplus.
George W. Bush, appointed President of the United States by a majority of Republicans on the United States Supreme Court, then proceeded to fritter away the nation’s good fortunes with unfunded tax cuts for the very rich (“the haves and have mores,” as Bush called them, “my base”).
As it turns out, Republicans have not been in power the last eight years, including controlling of all branches of government the first six. Both houses of the Congress acted as the lookout while the Bush administration violated every tenet of the Constitution of the United States, made short shrift of American rights and values, and undermined every national institution.
Didn’t our national legislature dote on this Republican administration as it slept at the switch while terrorists trained on American soil, hijacked American planes to attack Americans in America without anyone so much as raising a finger to stop them.
Exploitive RNC 9-11 Video
Then, when it turned out the men who attacked America were mostly from Saudi Arabia, this government, this administration mounted a Republican headwind to get approval from Congress to attack . . . Afghanistan, then Iraq.
No, it was not really Republicans who started these two costly wars, finishing neither, even as the Congress eschewed any oversight of the corruption and pillaging that took place by Republican functionaries and appointees on the ground in Iraq.
I would call it their mismanagement of the economy if the eventual outcome has not been what Republicans intended.
I would call it mismanagement what happened in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a major American city and American citizens literaly drowning as the world watched, without their government raising a finger to protect them, had it not been Republican blueprint of how government should function, which is not at all.
The list grows but not the outrage.
Because, it turns out, Republicans had not been in charge, did not do these things all these years. Sen. Obama was responsible for the high energy costs. Democrats were at fault for all these things.
And it’ll take a Republican, that maverick John McCain, and his moose-hunting sidekick, Sarah Palin, to set things right. McCain, the Charles Keating consort, and Palin, she of that welfare state, Alaska.
That’s my point. Republicans should have no leg to stand on, no argument to muster in the national debate on how make right what is wrong with our nation.
Wasn’t it Republicans who presided over the deterioration of the nation’s infrastructure, watched a major bridge collapse in Minnesota and then had the audacity to hold their national convention in that state, despite not raising a finger to fix that bridge?
“I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who’s hitting you? It’s about time that the people of America realized what the Republicans have been doing to them.”
Yet, here they are and here we are.
Which has led me to this ledge. If Republicans manage to win in November–and the polls show McCain-Palin either ahead or about even with Obama-Biden–then we should all join the Republican Party and change it from within.
Democrats, by losing an unloseable election, would have forfeited the right to be called a major political party.
Does it matter that Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ), is, at best, a spent force who mortgaged any ideals and principles he might have had in a Faustian bargain for the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States?
It was painful watching McCain last night and then listening to the empty suit media types prattle on about how well he did. All he has left to spout are the inanities and incoherent babble he spewed haltingly last night.
Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party nominee, needs to stick to the issues. Hit them hard. Stay on message for the next 60 days talking about issues that affect ordinary Americans and how to begin to repair the damage wrought by Pres. George W. Bush and his minions. Don’t engage these idiot Republicans. Talk to the American people about the future and how he would get the nation out of the morass the Republicans have created the past eight years.
The Republicans cannot, must not win on Nov. 4, 2008.
If I had to pick one word to summarize my impression of Gov. Palin’s speech tonight, it would be “shrill.” It was a fiercely partisan speech, a mocking speech, a culture-war speech. It was ably written and ably delivered, but it came with a sneer. While it may be the kind of speech that plays well in the convention hall, I have my doubts about its ability to persuade the shrinking number of undecideds remaining to vote for a McCain-Palin ticket. We’ll see.
What may be most significant about the speech, however, could be what it portends for the fall campaign. Palin’s goal, it seems to me, was pretty simple: make common folk dislike the Democrats again. It was a speech very loosely grounded in fact but deeply rooted in division. She threw around the old canards (and some new ones, too) with aplomb. I think this is a sign that we may be in for a bitterly negative campaign.
On that level, I’d have to pronounce the speech a success. Palin proved herself to be at least a decent attack dog. One needn’t have any foreign policy experience to fill that role and fill it well. She came out swinging and never let up.
Democrats who’ve scoffed at her will have to think again. Obama’s weakness since the beginning has been his inability or unwillingness to throw an effective counterpunch. Unless his campaign quickly figures out a way to do that against a self-professed Hockey Mom, I think we just might have been looking tonight at the next Vice President of the United States.
UPDATE: A conventional wisdom seems to be emerging that this was a speech designed to energize the GOP base. I disagree. By and large, I think the base is energized by Sarah Palin already. To me, this was a speech designed to drive up Obama’s negatives with swing voters. The only question is whether she succeeded and will succeed despite the ugly sneer that accompanied her negative broadsides.
Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we’ll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We’ll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she’s the right woman for the job Up next, one man who’s already convinced and he’ll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.
(cut away)
Peggy Noonan: Yeah.
Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys — this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work. And —
PN: It’s over.
MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.
CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.
PN: Saw Kay this morning.
CT: Yeah, she’s never looked comfortable about this —
MM: They’re all bummed out.
CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?
PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me– political bullshit about narratives —
CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.
MM: I totally agree.
PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.
MM: You know what’s really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.
CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.
MM: Yeah.
You good readers have to know that I have been reluctant to say much about this Sarah Palin mess. Needless to say, the selection by John McCain of this untested, unprepared governor is reckless, irresponsible and downright cynical.
At 72 years old, McCain is one of the oldest candidates to run for the presidency. Sen. McCain’s father died of a heart attack at 70 and his grandfather died of a heart attack at 60. McCain himself has survived four skin cancers (melanomas), including one in 2000 that was classified as Stage IIa.
As someone pointed out the other day, McCain has never had an Alzeheimer test, a grave oversight when you consider 13% of Americans over 65 have Alzheimer’s.
My point is this: Because of all these factors, McCain, who has been sloganeering that he is running for the presidency to put “country first,” owed the nation an unquestionably and superbly qualified vice presidential nominee.
Forget the scandals that have dogged Palin since she stepped into the arena. The fact is that she is a horrible choice because she is not qualified to be president of the United States. When we vote for McCain, because of his advanced age and health history, we’re also voting, this time more than at any time in the nation’s history, for his vice presidential pick as President of the United States.
Palin is so far out of the mainstream it does the term injustice to call her a conservative. She is a fringe right wing lunatic. Her postion on reproductive freedom is extreme, including cutting off funds to unwed teen mothers in her state. She says yes to creationism and denies global warming. She hounded out of a job a state police superintendent because he would not help her pursue a vendetta against an ex-brother-in-law by firing him.
I mean, Sarah Palin and her husband at one time or another belonged to a group that wanted Alaska to secede from the United States.
I am sorry to say this but, if the McCain-Palin ticket wins office, there’ll be no hope left for this country. No hope not because they won but that people voted for them.
Before she was running against him, Sarah Palin—the governor of Alaska and now the Republican candidate for Vice-President of the United States—thought it was pretty neat that Barack Obama was edging ahead of John McCain in her usually solidly red state. After all, she said, Obama’s campaign was using the same sort of language that she had in her gubernatorial race. “The theme of our campaign was ‘new energy,’ ” she said recently. “It was no more status quo, no more politics as usual, it was all about change. So then to see that Obama—literally, part of his campaign uses those themes, even, new energy, change, all that, I think, O.K., well, we were a little bit ahead on that.” She also noted, “Something’s kind of changing here in Alaska, too, for being such a red state on the Presidential level. Obama’s doing just fine in polls up here, which is kind of wigging people out, because they’re saying, ‘This hasn’t happened for decades that in polls the D’ ”—the Democratic candidate—“ ‘is doing just fine.’ To me, that’s indicative, too. It’s the no-more-status-quo, it’s change.”
It is conceivable that some people will think John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate because she is a woman. I know you find this shocking, but I swear I have heard it mentioned.
McCain does not believe in pandering to identity politics. He was looking for someone who was well prepared to fight against international Islamic extremism, the transcendent issue of our time. And in the end he decided that in good conscience, he was not going to settle for anyone who had not been commander of a state national guard for at least a year and a half. He put down his foot!
The obvious choice was Palin, the governor of Alaska, whose guard stands as our last best defense against possible attack by the resurgent Russian menace across the Bering Strait.
If I had to pick one word to summarize my impression of Gov. Palin’s speech tonight, it would be “shrill.” It was a fiercely partisan speech, a mocking speech, a culture-war speech. It was ably written and ably delivered, but it came with a sneer. While it may be the kind of speech that plays well in the convention hall, I have my doubts about its ability to persuade the shrinking number of undecideds remaining to vote for a McCain-Palin ticket. We’ll see.