Now That's Desperation....

You're not terrified that McCain won't win the election? Then perhaps you would like a nice tall glass of Kool-Aid. I'm sure you've already encountered the breathless accusation that Obama is a socialist, backed up by mendacious distortions of a comment he made to "Joe the Plumber" and tendentious interpretations of a segment from a seven-year-old radio call-in show.

What? You're not shivering in your boots? Well, then, Pat Buchanan is racing to the rescue with an effort so frantic, it makes Chicken Little look like a Zen Master. Border security? None of that - the border with Mexico will be wide open, and all illegal immigrants will be given amnesty. Taxes will be raised on the wealthiest 5% of Americans, in order to "redistribute" it to the bottom 40%. He'll somehow magically rewrite the Constitution, such that homosexuals have equal rights in all areas of life (the horror), affirmative action can be instituted based on quotas, and we'll have something just shy of forced abortions in every state ("America will become the most pro-abortion nation on earth"). Oh yes - and outrageous deficit spending that didn't get in the way of Buchanan's endorsement of G.W. back in 2004? It's once again a valid issue.

I hope you've drained your Kool-aid glass and are ready for your next helping, courtesy of Steven Calabresi in the Wall Street Journal. You may be thinking, "Republicans have appointed federal judges for twenty of the past twenty-eight years, and have pretty solid majorities throughout the federal judicial system, including the Supreme Court." But no - Obama will be able to appoint two - count them, two - judges to "the most important lower federal court in the country: the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit," G.W. having personally named a "only four". This will apparently cause the world to end. Presenting one of the most bizarre extrapolations I've heard to date of the Obama radio interview, Calabresi writes,

[Obama] he noted that the U.S. Constitution as written is only a guarantee of negative liberties from government -- and not an entitlement to a right to welfare or economic justice.

This raises the question of whether Mr. Obama can in good faith take the presidential oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution" as he must do if he is to take office.

It does? How?

Does Mr. Obama support the Constitution as it is written, or does he support amendments to guarantee welfare?

Well, there's no evidence that he has proposed or endorsed any such amendments, and even somebody whose knowledge of the Constitution barely meets the level of a high school civics class knows that the President cannot unilaterally amend the Constitution. (And anybody with a whit of sense knows that a "right to welfare" amendment would have a zero percent chance of passing.) But as you know, when you're trying to create hysteria you need not let facts or common sense get in the way.

Is his provision of a "tax cut" to millions of Americans who currently pay no taxes merely a foreshadowing of constitutional rights to welfare, health care, Social Security, vacation time and the redistribution of wealth?

That's right, Steve... Keep pouring the Kool-Aid....

If Mr. Obama wins we could possibly see any or all of the following: a federal constitutional right to welfare; a federal constitutional mandate of affirmative action wherever there are racial disparities, without regard to proof of discriminatory intent; a right for government-financed abortions through the third trimester of pregnancy; the abolition of capital punishment and the mass freeing of criminal defendants; ruinous shareholder suits against corporate officers and directors; and approval of huge punitive damage awards, like those imposed against tobacco companies, against many legitimate businesses such as those selling fattening food.

Ooh - let's not forget open borders and amnesty for all illegal aliens! And everybody will be forced to learn a second language!

But what about the war on terror? Buchanan doesn't mention Iraq, perhaps because he doesn't want to remind people that he's an isolotionist who opposes the entire Iraq venture. (Like deficits, the Iraq war also didn't stop Buchanan from endorsing Bush over Kerry.) And apparently (surprisingly?) Calabresi doesn't anticipate a Constitutional amendment that will make it illegal for us to fight wars against our enemies.

But don't worry - the WSJ is still serving up the Kool-Aid. Here's Pete Du Pont: It seems certain that "The U.S. military will withdraw from Iraq quickly and substantially, regardless of conditions on the ground or the obvious consequence of emboldening terrorists there and around the globe." You know, because Obama has made clear that he will consider conditions on the ground and is committed to focusing on the real threats to our nation's security around the world. When you write for the WSJ, it seems, every day is "opposites day".

It also "seems clear" that we'll become economic isolationists (is he trying to calm Pat Buchanan down), labor unions will be stronger, there will be more federal regulation (probably foisted on us by radical left-wingers like Alan Greenspan), we'll be "Europeanized" (perhaps there will even be a law that makes us give our kids Europeanized names like "Pierre") with "nationalized health care, Kyoto-like global-warming policies, and increased education regulation and spending" (something no conservative President would ever do, right?), and:

Free speech will be curtailed through the reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine to limit the conservative talk radio that so irritates the liberal establishment.

With the evidence in support of that being... er, being... No, stop thinking and start fearing. (And they say that the WSJ editorial page is full of drek - well, they've showed you now, haven't they.)

So much to be afraid of... I can barely stop shaking in my boots. It makes me long for the good old days, when I was "only" supposed to be terrified of Obama because he's secretly Muslim and is "palling around with terrorists".

Krauthammer's Late To The Party

Months ago, Peggy Noonan lamented that it would be difficult to attack Barack Obama because many of the attacks on him would be construed as having racial overtones. Her column made it appear that she wished to use attacks with racial overtones, so I guess she was doubly vexed. But then the whole Rev. Wright thing blew up, and it appeared that her concerns were misplaced. And then, whodaguessedit, Obama pulled through.

Now, Charles Krauthammer is in one of his trademark tizzies because the McCain campaign didn't follow his advice of "Smear, smear, and smear some more." You know, Charles, some useful advice you could have given to McCain? "Don't underestimate Obama. Don't assume that you'll win just by showing up." Except, you know, underestimating Obama is Krauthammer's other theme.

Krauthammer's thesis, that McCain could win if only he would get down in the gutter and smear Obama, has two huge flaws: First, it would require McCain to abandon the public persona that he has carefully built over the last couple of decades, risking both that he would alienate his more moderate supporters and look desperate, and second, polling showed that the smear tactics employed by "independent" groups are not working. Does it need to be said? It's counterproductive to tarnish your own image through tactics that do not diminish your opponent's support. Further, as Krauthammer has to know, there has been a concerted effort made to attack Obama's character and associations through Sarah Palin, resulting in negative media attention and perhaps contributing to Palin's diminishing approval rating with independents.

Krauthammer takes umbrage over this New York Times editorial, which dares to accuse the McCain-Palin team of "race-baiting and xenophobia". That editorial notes some of Palin's antics:

Ms. Palin, in particular, revels in the attack. Her campaign rallies have become spectacles of anger and insult. “This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America,” Ms. Palin has taken to saying.

That line follows passages in Ms. Palin’s new stump speech in which she twists Mr. Obama’s ill-advised but fleeting and long-past association with William Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and confessed bomber. By the time she’s done, she implies that Mr. Obama is right now a close friend of Mr. Ayers — and sympathetic to the violent overthrow of the government. The Democrat, she says, “sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

Now perhaps the Times is reading too much into how some of the people at McCain-Palin rallies have responded to statements like that - "Kill him", "Terrorist", etc. - while Krauthammer is happy to divorce the campaign tactics from those responses. But how would he characterize those dishonest attacks? Or does he endorse them?

Krauthammer proceeds to attack Bob Herbert, pointing to Herbert's misinterpretation of some of the imagery in McCain's "celebrity" ad.

He took to TV to denounce McCain's exhumation of that most vile prejudice, pointing out McCain's gratuitous insertion in the ad of "two phallic symbols," the Washington Monument and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Except that Herbert was entirely delusional. There was no Washington Monument. There was no Leaning Tower.

The truth is a bit more amusing.

Herbert mistook the images flashed across the ad behind Obama as being of landmarks that were more familiar to him.

Krauthammer's apoplectic that people see racial overtones in "the Republican attack on ACORN". You know, the organization McCain lavished with praise a couple of years ago. Maybe Krauthammer is correct that this is political opportunism and the racial element is purely coincidental, but you don't have to be a genius to see how an attack on Acorn, particularly one replete with misrepresentations and distortions, is likely to be perceived.

What makes the charges against McCain especially revolting is that he has been scrupulous in eschewing the race card. He has gone far beyond what is right and necessary, refusing even to make an issue of Obama's deep, self-declared connection with the race-baiting Rev. Wright.

Here, Krauthammer is attempting to blow out of proportion and generalize the Times editorial's criticism of the tactics of the McCain-Palin campaign, and most notably of the tactics employed by Palin, as an unfair broadside against McCain. It seems too easy to point out that McCain has to know about, and should be held responsible for, the tactics of his vice presidential candidate. Otherwise, how could we not infer that he's so out of touch that he is completely incapable of governing a nation? But more to the point, Krauthammer is doing what he's accusing others of doing - taking an isolated comment, blowing it out of proportion, then suggesting that the exaggerated version he presents is typical of McCain's critics.

It is not. McCain's favorables have slipped, certainly, but that appears to relate to his performance in the debates, his simultaneous floundering and grandstanding on the fiscal crisis, and his (as far as independent voters are concerned) poor choice of a running mate. There's no evidence that he's being affected by racial issues, and there's reason to believe that his eschewing Krauthammer's chant of "Smear, baby, smear" has saved him from further erosion of his support.

Even at this point, Krauthammer can't bring himself to cut his losses. He has to accuse Obama of having played "the race card" against McCain. For this he resorts to the Obama comment that inspired some of McCain's campaign staffers to accuse Obama of "playing the race card", in what turned out to be a severe and premature overplaying of their own hand. Those poor tactics, still endorsed by Krauthammer, got media play, but their limited effect on poll numbers likely play a role in McCain's reluctance to again delve into race issues.

And Obama has shown no hesitation in [deploying the race card] to McCain. Weeks ago, in Springfield, Mo., and elsewhere, he warned darkly that George Bush and John McCain were going to try to frighten you by saying that, among other scary things, Obama has "a funny name" and "doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills."

That's all he has? Obama's joking about how he has a "funny name", even as McCain supporters continued and continue to make Obama/Osama comments, or emphasize that his middle name is Hussein? Or that he doesn't look like other presidents on the dollar bill? You mean, like this McCain web ad illustrated even before Obama made that comment? Obama's response to the "race card" nonsense was to point out that it was nonsense. Krauthammer's case against Obama here seems far weaker than the one he is attempting to refute against McCain. (And let's just say, some of McCain's backers aren't helping.)

All in all, I suspect Krauthammer's tantrum will play well with some factions on the far right, but will do nothing to help McCain with the voters he needs to win over. But that's no surprise - other than their mutual underestimation of Obama, one place McCain has demonstrated a great deal of sense is in consistently rejecting Krauthammer's notions of what it will take to win the race. The obstacle before McCain is not insurmountable, although I suspect it will quickly become so if Krauthammer takes the lead on his campaign.

Well, He's Right....

Except the angry barrage of insults was directed at Obama and came from his supporters.

What's The Story Here

According to the Times,

Senator John McCain has also been targeted by a liberal group suggesting that his years in a prison camp have made him unfit to serve as president.

If anybody passing by here knows, what's the group and where can I find their website? (I know about "Vietnam Veterans Against McCain", but they don't appear to be a liberal group, it doesn't appear that anybody takes them seriously, and they don't fit the description.)

They Say That Like It's a Surprise....

The New York Times says,

Harsh advertisements and negative attacks are a staple of presidential campaigns, but Senator John McCain has drawn an avalanche of criticism this week from Democrats, independent groups and even some Republicans for regularly stretching the truth in attacking Senator Barack Obama’s record and positions.

It is no surprise that there are Republicans who want to run an honorable campaign. If anything should be a surprise, given the smears run against him in 2000, it's that McCain isn't one of them.

Did They Overplay Their Hand?

This is about as blunt an article as I've seen from a mainstream source, directly contrasting the claims of Palin and McCain with the facts. Something could have been added to this, though:

In Alaska, meanwhile, the investigator looking into whether Palin abused her power as governor in trying to fire her former brother-in-law asked state lawmakers for the power to subpoena Palin's husband, Todd, a dozen others and the phone records of a top aide. The state House and Senate judiciary committees were expected to grant the request.

Palin told ABC she welcomed the investigation. "There's nothing to hide in this," she said.

Nothing to hide, yet still she's hiding stuff....

Malkin Most Foul

I know... if you're going to look for hypocrisy you shouldn't flip over the slimiest rock on the blogosphere and feign surprise at what lies beneath, but....

What will the bottom-feeders do next? Investigate their dating history? Hound them during their pre-natal visits a la Alan Colmes?

The bottom-feeders, Michelle, will probably do something like this.
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Hypocrisy Watch Update:

Oh, That Awful... Madonna?

The New York Times has concerns about campaign ad imagery:

This year’s presidential campaign has already been marked by far too much negative advertising, with coded racial images and sophomoric insults. It was outrageous when Mr. McCain’s campaign juxtaposed Mr. Obama with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as part of its effort to denigrate him as a person, rather than debating him on this country’s huge problems.

So needless to say it goes on to describe the McCain campaign's "coded racial images" and, having acknowledged them, to excoriate those who accused the Obama campaign of raising the "race card"? Thus opening itself up to a barrage of "did not"-"did too" complaints from the campaigns and their supporters? Get real.

No, instead the New York Times hones in on the real devil of the campaign:

Madonna’s video is immeasurably worse. If she thought she was helping Mr. Obama by juxtaposing his image with that of Gandhi and Bono, she was wrong.

We do not subscribe to the “shut up and sing” notion that celebrities should stay out of politics — a position most often espoused by Republicans about stars who support Democrats. There is no room in decent discourse for comparing a candidate for president to Hitler.

As if Madonna was trying to help anybody but herself. Really. It isn't like we've been through all of this before, is it? It couldn't be Madonna fishing for lots of free media attention - and getting it - could it?

I have an idea! Let's lavish Madonna with media attention. That'll teach her.

Poor, Clueless McCain...

He doesn't know what his campaign staff is doing, and bears no responsibility for their conduct, or so says ABC:

"With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the sixties, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?," an announcer says.

The spot is incorrect in insinuating that John McCain himself has brought up Ayers - it is in fact McCain's campaign that has sought to use the Ayers association against Obama, and McCain spokesman Brian Rogers did so again upon learning about the ad.

McCain knows what his drones are doing. Obviously, if McCain doesn't want them to carry a particular message, he can order them to stop. Ordering his proxies to smear Obama doesn't remove any of the responsibility from McCain.

Equal Time?

I watch almost no commercial television, so I miss pretty much all the campaign commercials. (I know... poor me, right?)

So if you see a particularly unfair attack aimed at McCain, let me know and I'll consider giving it and its sponsor "equal time".

Totally Unprofessional....

By any reasonable standard, the McCain campaign's response to his forgetfulness as to how many homes he owns is childish, whiny, grating, and totally unprofessional - at least by any standard other than political campaigning. Which I guess is the best his campaign can do.

The saddest part is not McCain's perpetuation of his gutter tactics - it's that, as in past elections, they seem to work.
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Update: Apparently McCain's confusion arises from the fact that he doesn't own any homes. The number "zero" eluded him, but... well, whatever. In any event, that makes any criticism of his inability to remember the number "zero" an attack on Cindy McCain. Is anybody swallowing it?

McCain Has To Run A Sleazy Campaign

It's fascinating to me how Republican hacks like David Brooks can find ways to excuse pretty much any bad conduct by the political right. Lately, right-wing pundits give us an interesting mix of editorials first defending McCain's campaign tactics as legitimate, and then suggesting that they are somehow not his fault because he's under the mind control of his campaign advisors. Today, Brooks seems to concede that McCain's campaign has gone dirty, but claims that poor John had no choice.

According to Brooks, if McCain tried to run a clean campaign on the issues he would lose. But no, he's not running a dirty campaign because he wants to win. He's running a dirty campaign because he can't win any other way.¹ And that's your fault.

I could easily revise the opening of Brooks' editorial to make it less flattering:

On Tuesdays, Senate Republicans hold a weekly policy lunch. The party leaders usually hand out a Message of the Week that the senators are supposed to repeat at every opportunity. These messages come from political advisors and pollsters who believe that if their carefully constructed half-truths are repeated enough they will provide a political advantage.

John McCain loves these lunches with his gang of fellow ne’er-do-wells.² Typical of his style, he cracks jokes, razzes the speaker and acts like nobody else in the room has anything important to say. Then he takes the paper with the Message of the Week back to his office. He then gives it to a staffer, typically commanding: “Here’s your message. Learn it. Love it. Live it.”

Brooks sees McCain as inclined toward frivolity, describing his pre-campaign personality as a "frantic and freewheeling style, which was unpredictable, untamed and, at some level, unprofessional." Brooks laments,

When McCain and his team set out to win the presidency in 2008, they hoped to run a campaign with this sort of spirit....

It hasn’t turned out that way. McCain hasn’t been able to run the campaign he had envisioned. Instead, he and his staff have been given an education by events.

The problems for McCain apparently started in the primary, where some reporters had the audacity to treat him like every other candidate they covered.

McCain started out with the same sort of kibitzing campaign style that he used to woo the press back in 2000. It didn’t work. This time there were too many cameras around and too many 25-year-old reporters and producers seizing on every odd comment to set off little blog scandals.

But according to Brooks, having failed to learn the lessons of his primary campaign which he won despite coming across as having "lacked focus", McCain attempted to extend his unsuccessful tactic into the general election.

McCain started his general-election campaign in poverty-stricken areas of the South and Midwest. He went through towns where most Republicans fear to tread and said things most wouldn’t say. It didn’t work. The poverty tour got very little coverage on the network news.

I think it's more accurate to say that the press did cover the "poverty tour", but that it didn't work because the public at large doesn't much care about issues of poverty, and it's pretty clear that McCain doesn't either. There may be courage in taking a "poverty tour" into the storm-damaged areas of New Orleans, particularly when your prior message to its residents verged on "Let them eat cake," but which voters did McCain hope to win over with his stunt? (Other than oil industry executives.)

McCain and his advisers realized the only way they could get TV attention was by talking about the subject that interested reporters most: Barack Obama.

This, of course, elides McCain's conduct during his primary campaign, in which he engaged in many direct and pointed attacks on Mitt Romney and his record. Those primary campaign tactics are consistent with McCain's present tactics against Obama.

Brooks' analysis then devolves into pure fiction:

McCain started with grand ideas about breaking the mold of modern politics. He and Obama would tour the country together doing joint town meetings.

As anybody who follows election campaigns can tell you, the person trailing in the polls always wants more debates; the person leading typically wants fewer. Where was Brooks in 2004, when G.W. tried to limit Kerry to two debates? Also, as should be obvious, this series of "town hall" debates would both avoid any substantive debate of the issues and effectively dictate a large part of Obama's campaign schedule. A win-win-win for McCain, so let's not pretend he had lily-white motives.

He would pick a postpartisan running mate, like Joe Lieberman.

I must have missed this tentative choice by McCain, as opposed to his playing around by refusing to deny others' speculation about his potential choices. Surely Brooks isn't simply making this up, and can source this claim? No, wait... you say he's making it up? I'm shocked.

And what, exactly, makes Lieberman "postpartisan"? The fact that he is aligned with McCain and the GOP on numerous issues? Was Zell Miller "postpartisan" as well? By Brooks' apparent definitions, and his apparent believe that a "postpartisan" choice would be so wonderful for the country, why doesn't he urge McCain to choose Lincoln Chafee?

He would make a dramatic promise, like vowing to serve for only one totally nonpolitical term.

Again, pure fiction. Even if McCain were inclined to do this it would only work against his campaign - the implicit message being, "I'm so old, I'll only run for one term so I don't end up dying or going senile while in office." But there's absolutely no reason to believe McCain has ever considered running for only a single term, let alone a single "non-political" term.

The issue is not closed, but G.O.P. leaders are resisting a cross-party pick like Lieberman.

More fiction. The issues were never open.

McCain and his advisers have been compelled to adjust to the hostile environment around them. They have been compelled, at least in their telling, to abandon the campaign they had hoped to run. Now they are running a much more conventional race, the kind McCain himself used to ridicule.

And yet Obama has so far managed to largely avoid engaging in McCain-style dirty campaigning. So Brooks is really telling us that when McCain realized he was unlikely to win on the merits he tossed all of his purported scruples and standards out the window. But only because they "had to"... to win. Which is all that matters, right?

What astonishes me is that there are still people who swallow this tripe. McCain hasn't been forced to do anything. He has chosen to embark on a low-road campaign. If Obama follows suit it will not be because McCain's slimy tactics forced him to do so - it will because he wants to win. The lesson here is how little it takes for McCain to shed his skin, and how readily hacks like Brooks will provide him with cover.

The man who hopes to inspire a new generation of Americans now attacks Obama daily. It is the only way he can get the networks to pay attention.

Nonsense. If McCain were to give a speech lamenting the conduct of the media and insisting that they cover specific issues, his statements would dominate media coverage of the campaign. If he were to deplore the media's coverage of personalities or campaign commercials and ask that they substantively look at the contrasts between himself and Obama on specified key issues, the media would dutifully follow his instruction. He doesn't, and he won't, because he loses on the issues.

As a result of McCain's sleaze-ball tactics, Brooks tells us, "A long-shot candidacy now seems entirely plausible." But that's nonsense. The proper question, before or after McCain went dirty, is "Why isn't McCain winning?"

Brooks closes by again "blaming the system" for McCain's conduct:

Both he and Obama had visions of upending the system. Maybe in office, one of them will still be able to do that. But at least on the campaign trail, the system is winning.

So why is it that Obama is still in the lead,³ despite not (yet) joining McCain in the gutter "system"?
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Update: Matt Yglesias suggests that, as Brooks is a long-time McCain fanboy, we owe him the benefit of the doubt. Granted, what one hand giveth the other hand taketh away - the message Yglesias draws from the piece is "Brooks: McCain is an Unprincipled Sellout". But personally, I don't think the tone of the piece was "more in sadness than in anger". I think the piece follows the current "memo of the week", that attempts to distance McCain, the noble maverick former-POW straight-talker, from the tactics of his campaign. Brooks seeks to relieve McCain of both fault and responsibility for his campaign's decisions.

As for a "progressive blogosphere convention that everything David Brooks writes must be read in the most ungenerous way possible", I'm not sure that I'm part of that particular sphere, nor do I take my lead from it. My criticisms of Brooks probably started long before the "ungenerosity" of others. I'm also not one to hand out "benefit of the doubt" like candy. When was the last time Brooks made an error or dubious statement that did not inure to the benefit of the political right? The benefit of the doubt I give him is that I think he's smart enough to know exactly what he's doing. Thus, on those occasions when I take issue with his errors and dubious claims, I hold him responsible for his own words and actions.
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1. This, apparently, is a very important distinction.

2. Note that it was Brooks who called McCain a "ne'er-do-well", not me. ("John McCain generally spends the lunches at a table with a gang of fellow ne’er-do-wells.")

3. Pollster.com has Obama leading nationally by 2.6%.

Laugh It Off?

As you might expect from a person smart enough to see through the smokescreen, Dan Larison believes that Obama has a viable campaign tactic in laughing off attacks:

This is very much like the overheated response to “Celeb” or “The One”–rather than simply laughing off these ads and articles as ridiculous, Obama’s supporters and many media figures seem to be deadly serious about stressing the cunning, super-secret deployment of racial messages in both. Whether it is Perlstein hallucinating Nazi propaganda film homages or Gergen detecting racist tropes or Noah discerning skinniness as the latest one of these tropes, the responses have managed to make the various targets of their criticism seem sane, well-balanced and serious by comparison.

Yet one of the reasons campaigns don't laugh off these attacks can be seen in the history of the Swift Boat Liars campaign against John Kerry. Kerry attempted the Larison approach, "mock them for their stupidity, and stop investing them with the importance that their creators want you to give them", and by the time he recognized the failure of his tactics it was too late to stamp out the lies.

Obama seems intent on staying above the fray, with statements like "John McCain is an honorable man who is running an increasingly dishonorable campaign". But history tells us, dishonorable campaigns work. That's why McCain is running one, and why he now has a nominal lead in the polls. If they're unrebutted, they grow legs. That's what happened with the Swift Boat nonsense, to the point that a lot of people who were more than smart enough to "know better" were defending the attacks. And for people so passively receptive to smears and innendo as to believe that Obama's comment about not looking like past presidents was racist?Larison wrote,

What I find even more remarkable is the idea that anyone could interpret Obama’s comment as being racist. It is now “racist” to hint that others are going to use a candidate’s race against him? Does that make any sense? Do 53% of likely voters really think Obama making an obvious reference to his race (one so obvious that you have to think your audience morons to deny it) is racist? If so, can we officially declare that the word has no more meaning, or at least that for the most part it is trotted out whenever we want to refer to something as Very Bad? Obama’s remark may be many things, but of all the words I can think of to describe it racist is not among them.

What hope should anybody have that those voters will see through McCain's smokescreen?

If I were running ads, I would pull some examples of McCain deploring negative campaigning in the past, contrast them with his current smear tactics, and lament that McCain's sense of honor seems to have disappeared. Perhaps that's the next step after "he's an honorable man who is running a dishonorable campaign" - it could become, "I used to think he was a man of honor, but actions speak louder than words".

I don't actually have a problem with "attack ads" as such - a lot of fair comparison ads get called "attack ads". I don't see accurate ads that boil down to, "My position is X, my opponent's position is Y, and my position is better" as a bad thing, even if unflattering pictures are presented of the opposing candidate as ominous music plays. I don't think the public would be served by a sushine and lollipops campaign of positive ads that elide any differences between the candidates - we saw in 2000 how a popular conception of, "there are no real differences between the candidates," coupled with media ennui, can lead to huge numbers of voters actually buying into that nonsense.

You know what? The biggest audience for the harshest critics of the current round of McCain ads is Obama's supporters. Check the blogs - to the extent that they're commenting, McCain's supporters appear to be uniformly gloating about them. They're unaffected by the criticism. To the extent that there has been a shift, it has been in the perception of some pundits who are pretty much taking Obama's line - they can't believe that the great and honorable McCain is behaving like this. (Maybe it's mind control.)

Obama's probably correct, to keep his official pronouncements in sync with the punditocracy's views. Letting them decide when this is, in fact, McCain's "real voice" rather than the work of a doppleganger. To get ahead of them would likely result in their turning on him. But no, pretending to laugh at bad jokes doesn't make them go away. It's more likely to trigger a response of, "It's not funny unless there's some truth behind it, and even you think it's a joke." When a smear campaign is launched, its authors are deserving of scorn, and although I see it as largely ineffectual I have no problem with the target's supporters initiating what amounts to a grassroots expression of scorn. At the same time, smear campaigns usually don't get legs without the active cooperation (and sometimes collaboration) of the mainstream media. So for criticism pointed in that direction, at all levels of the campaign, I say "(cautiously) turn up the heat."

Carving Out Space

In standard form for one of its unsigned editorials, the Washington Post has some silly things to say about the current election campaign. The sort of thing that, understandably, would make any self-respecting columnist hesitant to sign the thing:

There was, no doubt, a calculated element of tactical foul-crying in the McCain campaign's loud and immediate protestations that Mr. Obama had not only "played the race card" but dealt it "from the bottom of the deck." This assessment was overstated. But just as the Obama campaign is free to do what it can to counteract the complications of running as the first African American nominee, the McCain campaign needs to carve out space to wage a vigorous campaign without fear of being labeled racist at the slightest criticism.

I agree with the assertion that Obama shouldn't be suggesting that his opponent is making an issue of race when that's not the case. But when I first heard an actual recording of the "dollar bills" comment and found out that Obama used the line to elicit a laugh from his audience, it seemed pretty clear that he was attempting to defuse race as a potential issue, not inject it. And I still don't see how anybody but McCain benefits from making race an issue - as evidenced by his campaign's working overtime to keep it front and center.

Beyond that, as the Post describes,

[McCain]'s not entitled to be dishonest, as he was, for example, in the ad suggesting that Mr. Obama preferred to play basketball rather than visit wounded troops on his trip to Germany.

And boy, was that dishonest. After all, didn't that footage in fact come from a military base? But hold on a second... did you say basketball? You have an ad comparing Obama to two young, white women whose recent media attention has been driven by scandal, followed by an image of him playing basketball (and playing it well)? [Addendum: David Gergen states that McCain's "The One/Messiah" ads are racist "code", adding yet another example to the series of dubious allusions.] With the ads produced by some of the most sophisticated smear artists in the business? Who clearly want race to be an issue? We're supposed to believe that it's all innocent, because the smear artists say so?

If Fred Hiatt and his gang wanted to be honest about what is going on, they would confront the McCain campaign based upon the most reasonable interpretation of their over-the-top statements and continued effort to keep this issue at the top of the news - they're trying to set up a context where when they inject race into the campaign (whether deliberately or accidentally) and Obama responds, they can shrug and say, "There he goes again". Is Hiatt being deliberately obtuse in playing along?

Attack of the McCain Shills

The issue of offshore drilling presents a conundrum for Obama. History tells us that if, during a political campaign, you try to explain a complicated position - why offshore drilling is unwise even in an era of high gas prices, how it won't affect current gas prices, and how it's unlikely to have any material impact on future gas prices - you lose the war of the sound bite. So Obama has offered nuance to those who he hopes can understand it, while trying to remove the issue from the table by saying that under the right circumstances he would support lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling.

In contrast, the Repubican attack machine has been in overdrive. Remember how a month or so ago they were perpetuating the lie that Cuba was drilling off of our shore? They're eagerly suggesting, knowing their claim to be entirely false, that offshore drilling or ANWR drilling will somehow lower gas prices. They want very much to keep this issue on the table, hoping that fabricated claims, accusations and sound bites will prevail. So out comes a McCain shill:

On policy, [potential McCain V.P. pick Tim] Pawlenty said he doubted Obama's statement Friday that he would support expanded offshore oil drilling if it were the key to a compromise on comprehensive energy policy.

"He's put so many contingencies around it that I wonder - in fact I question - whether he would do it at all," Pawlenty said in an interview. "It may be a way for him to gain favor during the election, and tube it later because all the contingencies weren't met."

Why is this even news?

Meanwhile, on the "race card" front, another shill crawls out of the woodwork:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Barack Obama is "absolutely" injecting the issue of race into the presidential campaign on Sunday morning, and twice calling it "a lie" for the Democratic presidential nominee to claim otherwise.

“To say that Barack Obama did not intentionally inject the idea of his name and his race is a lie,” Graham said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

Is there anybody out there with half (or more) of a brain who believes that Obama gains from having race be an issue in the campaign? If that's the case, as with offshore drilling, why is McCain sending out an army of shills to try to keep the issue front and center?

Rather than asking that question, for the most part the media (as you might expect) plays along. Or observes, "This is horrible, but this isn't the true voice of the wise and honorable John McCain."

McCain's New Campaign Song?

McCain's focus on Obama's "celebrity" seems to be coopting the campaign song I once suggested for Joe Biden, "New Kid In Town", a song is in the voice of somebody who is past his prime. Heck, it's even about a guy named (albeit figuratively) Johnny.

You're walking away and they're talking behind you,
They will never forget you 'til somebody new comes along.

Where you been lately? There's a new kid in town.
Everybody loves him, don't they?

C'mon, John, you used to be happy to play up your status as a political celebrity. If you drew a crowd of 200,000 to one of your own speeches, you would justifiably crow about your accomplishment.

As much as people want to claim that this isn't really McCain's authentic voice, that he's uncomfortable with the low road, for now it nonetheless is his voice.

Update: Another round of McCain's tactics being "out of sync with the real guy".

McCain's Bad Analogies

Yesterday on On Point, in response to an assertion that Obama's statements about his appearance as compared to past Presidents was "stating the obvious" to try to defuse attacks, National Review staff writer Stephen Spruiell said (starting at 18:31),

Stating the obvious, I mean, that's just not something that McCain and Bush have been doing, have been going around and pointing out that Obama is black. I mean, that's what he said that they were doing and they're not. Now I mean as far as the veteran card as opposed to the gender card or the race card. I mean the difference would be that being a veteran is something that you can legitimately put on your résumé and say, you know, like, this is something that I've done. You know, this is something that, you know, you can judge for yourself, but maybe it qualifies me to lead the country better than sort of a one-term Senator who, you know, had some experience in state politics before.

When asked specifically about the comparison of Obama to two "blonde, flouncing white girls" could be seen as a kind of race statement "in the music if not in the words",

That's, I think that's so ludicrous. I mean, you know, clearly the ad was comparing Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and saying that he has a lot of fame, but he has not done a lot to, you know, justify that. I mean, that is, sort of, Paris Hilton is famous for being famous. I mean, what, we, you know, you can't juxtapose Obama next to any white woman without somebody like, immediately accusing whoever made the ad of racism? I mean, that's, I, that's, that's so, so paranoid as to, you know, defy belief.

This is a pretty stupid defense of the ad. Granted, the McCain campaign's official defenses are pretty stupid, also - the idea that they're comparing Obama to the world's biggest celebrities, by pulling two blonde young women out of yesterday's news. The absurd claim that they're the #2 and #3 celebrities in the world behind Obama? Pure fiction. Citing the Forbes Celebrity 100, upon which neither Spears nor Hilton appear,

Instead, the top 10, in order: Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Angelina Jolie, Beyonce Knowles, David Beckham, Johnny Depp, Jay-Z, The Police, JK Rowling, Brad Pitt.

So, they didn't pick other big celebrities, who were either men, or black, or married.

What they picked was two sexually available white women.

But it must have been a coincidence, because we know John McCain wants to run an elevated campaign focusing on the serious issues that America faces.

Okay, so the McCain camp's excuse for why it picked Spears and Hilton is a fraud. Perhaps that's why Spruiell tried to bend the excuse into something new - the idea that Obama, Spears and Hilton did nothing to deserve their celebrity. Except Spears did a lot to earn her celebrity status. In addition to being talented as a child - as a singer, gymnast and performer - and working harder during her pre-teen years than many people do during their entire lives, she actually picked up the pace during her period of fame. If McCain thinks his touring schedule is rough, perhaps he should ask Spears how many weekends she got to take off during the height of her fame.

Now if the analogy is to Spears current public image, muddied by her legal problems, drug problems, erratic behavior and mental illness? Let's say that type of judgment should hit a bit too close to home. It's not fun watching a talented person turn their life into a train wreck over drugs. Anybody who has lived through the ordeal of a loved one spiraling toward rock bottom should have empathy for somebody like Spears (and for her family) - to me, if that's the image of Spears that McCain intended to convey, it's disgusting to claim pride in exploiting her illness.

As for Paris Hilton, let's see.... Which of the candidates took middling political talent, mixed it with a strong family name and millions of dollars in inherited cash, and bought his way into status as a political celebrity? Hm... Strangely, it doesn't seem to have been Obama.

McCain Needs Better Defenders

One of McCain's supporters makes an embarrassing series of assertions in defense of John McCain:

But former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who supports McCain, called Obama's comments "a very sophisticated injection of race."

"It was sort of like a political prophylactic," Blackwell said. "[Obama] was anticipating, you know, that race will be an issue, although John McCain has worked very, very diligently to make sure that race is not the issue.

So you see? Obama was working too hard to try to prevent race from becoming an issue. So as part of his diligent effort to make sure that race is not an issue, McCain had to make race an issue.

"We'll let the chips fall where they may when it comes to how people perceive this, but we are not going to let anybody paint John McCain, who's fought his entire life for equal rights for everyone, to be able to be painted as racist."

Right... McCain has a long history devoted to equal rights for people who didn't want to celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. And equal rights for those who want to fly the Confederate Battle Flag. Besides, if that's not what you mean by "equal rights", he's flip-flopped so that doesn't count any more. Also, he supports, er, used to support but now opposes affirmative action, but either way he was supporting "equal rights". Equal rights for gay people? No, wait, don't bring that into a discussion of race....

We didn't draw first blood. I mean, this campaign has been rough and tumble since the day Barack Obama got his nomination, and we've withered under the attacks of the Obama campaign on a daily basis.

Ooh... You can almost picture McCain, dressed up as Rambo, slurring out, "He drew first blood."

Would these be the "attacks" where McCain has been accused of supporting the Bush Administration policies that he... supports? The reciprocal misrepresentation of the meaning of Senate votes on multi-issue bills? I'll grant that I bypass most commercial television, and thus rarely see the attack ads, but what did I overlook?

Meanwhile, McCain doesn't seem much better at defending his gutter tactics. He is "proud of" an attack ad that compares Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Is he similarly proud of the lies in his ad about Obama's cancelled visit with injured troops in Germany? Are we to believe that it is a coincidence that his "race card" claims were released at a time when there was growing media attention being paid to those lies - and the fact that he had another attack ad scripted and ready to go if Obama had visited the troops?

Is the worst part that the media continues to follow the campaign at the surface level, that it drops the ball on real stories to pick up the latest campaign fluff, that McCain seems to have obtained a bounce in the polls through his gutter tactics, or that this could be the point where the campaign gets truly dirty on both sides?

Faux Outrage

CJR gets it about right, in relation to the McCain camp's whining about Gen. Clark's "attack" on McCain's war record:

The McCain camp, sensing an opportunity, complained that Clark had “attacked John McCain’s military service record.” Of course, Clark had done nothing of the kind. He had questioned the relevance of McCain’s combat experience as a qualification to be president of the United States. This is a distinction that you’d expect any reasonably intelligent nine-year old to be able to grasp.

* * *

It’s crucially important that we have a political debate in this country that’s at least sophisticated enough to be able to handle the following rather basic idea: Arguing that a person’s record of military service is not a qualification for the presidency does not constitute “attacking” their military credentials; nor can it be described as invoking their military service against them, or as denying their record of war heroism.

That’s not a very high bar for sophistication. But right now it’s one the press isn’t capable of clearing.

And how's this for a "pots and kettles" moment:

If that’s the kind of campaign that Sen. Obama and his surrogates and his supporters want to engage I understand that, but it doesn’t reduce the price of gallon of gas by one penny. It doesn’t achieve energy independence [or in the midst of a foreclosure crisis] help an American stay in their home.

That sort of negative campaign rhetoric does precisely... what to alleviate those problems? (Probably about as much as McCain's actual energy policy, but....)

If McCain wanted to be, you know, honest - the sort of thing some might call straight talk - yet still take advantage of the moment, he would have still been able to say something like this: "If my foreign policy record and experience were as short as my opponent's and I were offering up my time as a POW as a foreign policy credential, General Clark would have a valid point. But while my time as a POW was long in years, it's a minor entry on my foreign policy résumé, and there's no disputing that my qualifications go far beyond those of Senator Obama."
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More faux outrage on Fau... Fox News, from the inimitable Karl Rove. You know, it might be cheaper to employ a wind-up toy to provide election commentary, and the audience would probably get more from the experience.

Our Village Has Two Idiots

One... Two... Three if you count this guy. How did we get so lucky.
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Update: As by now you know, McCain endorsed talking to Hamas as recently as two years ago. For McCain it's not about honesty, honor or good foreign policy. It's about getting elected. That's no different from most other politicians, you say? Exactly.