Bad War Coverage

Fred Hiatt personifies a lot of the problems with the mainstream media, not the least of which is its coverage of the Iraq war. Throughout the conflict, the media focus has been on military action and violence. There's been scant coverage of the political situation in Iraq, or how inter- and even intra-sectarian conflicts continues to pose an impediment to peace and the withdrawal of forces. Hiatt, a reliable cheerleader for the war, now brings us this:

It's easy to forget the utter hopelessness that had settled on Washington with regard to Iraq less than two years ago.

Sure, it's easy to forget because without high levels of violence, the mainstream media sees little need to even cover the war. Britney's public meltdown? Lipstick on a pig? Those are stories.

And it's easy to forget the nearly universal skepticism that greeted President Bush's announcement of a new strategy in January 2007.

It's easy to forget how well-grounded that skepticism was, given the abject incompetence of the Bush Administration's conduct of the war to that point. A lot of the skepticism wasn't directed at the idea that more troops could reduce violence - it was a question of, "Is this too little, too late." As it turns out, the Anbar Awakening had a profound effect on levels of violence, as has the effective ethnic segregation of formerly integrated neighborhoods of Baghdad. Those aren't effects of "the surge", though, and it isn't even clear to what degree the surge has helped with recent successes in Iraq. Don't take my word for it - take the word of General Petraeus:¹

So would the Sunni Awakening have succeeded without the surge? Possibly, he concedes, but the surge came at that time and helped empower Sunni leaders, paying their fighters and backing them up on the streets. This is where Seneca the Younger comes in: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

It would be reasonable to credit the Bush Administration for letting its military leaders (finally) move away from its bad strategies of the preceding five years, so as to create the opportunity. But instead, people like Hiatt consistently ignore the positions of people who are aware of the facts on the ground in order to spin the fiction that everything is about the surge, and only the surge. My suspicion is that Hiatt is acting deliberately, as this fiction allows him to support McCain and attack Obama (consistent with Hiatt's own preferred interventionist foreign policy), whereas telling the truth would hamper him in his political goals.

Hiatt also elides from history the overstated success and impact of the surge, which resulted in stories like this:

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multinational Force Iraq, told the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees today that the surge in Iraq is showing progress, and that he believes troop reductions to pre-surge levels could begin by summer 2008 without jeopardizing gains made.

How well did that turn out, again?

Hiatt reinvents the success of the surge, consistent with the mainstream media's principal interest in covering acts of violence, as being about the violence, not about political progress. Although he is cautious enough to refer to the surge as creating only "a chance of success", Hiatt fails to describe any of the benchmarks of success described by the Bush Administration or how they have been met. Earlier this year we had columnists like Charles Krauthammer pretending that significant progress had been made on at least some of those criteria. But despite the amount of progress we were promises by the end of 2007, we're still waiting for even one of Bush's benchmarks to be fulfilled. So yes, changes of strategy combined with the surge created a significant window of opportunity - one Hiatt would be correct to celebrate - but it appears that under Bush's "leadership" that opportunity is (again) being squandered.

While Hiatt praises national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley for quietly lobbying for the surge, consistent with the rest of his piece he omits mention of others who played a role (and perhaps a more important role) in bringing about the policy changes that created the groundwork for the surge's contribution to holding down violence.² Hiatt observes,

Out of that success, in fact, a new conventional wisdom seems to be settling on Washington - that the U.S. job in Iraq is nearing completion, and the time has come to move on to Afghanistan and other challenges.

Okay, let's call that the consensus. Has it arisen because of good media coverage and commentary about the realities in Iraq, or has it arisen due to the absence of good coverage and commentary? Hiatt's implicit answer: the latter:

If, as seems likely, the celebration is premature and U.S. troops will be needed in Iraq for some time to come, we can hope that the next national security adviser again has the strength to resist the crowd and the deftness to steer the country in the right direction.

If that's what Hiatt believes, why did he devote 98% of his column to suggesting the opposite - that the surge has been a great success, and vindicates Bush to the degree that historians will assess the surge "as an act of remarkable courage"? And how is it "an act of remarkable courage" to advance a policy when virtually everybody in your party has your back?
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1. It's coincidence, but should we find some amusement in the fact that Petraeus likes to use the "lipstick on a pig" metaphor? And that his doing so was deemed "media-savvy"?

2. I'm content to assume that the surge has played a role in the reduction of violence, even a substantial role, but given the difficulty that even General Petraeus has in quantifying its contribution I'm not going to try to state a figure, save for observing that Hiatt's implied "100%" is both overconfident and overstated.

Faith-Based Condescension and Reproductive Rights

A few days ago Michael Gerson wrote a column describing Trig Palin as having "smashed the chromosomal barrier" by being proudly displayed by his mother at the Republican convention. Typical of Gerson, he offered a very superficial analysis of the issues and makes childish digs at the Democratic Party and attempts to advance a dishonest label ("eugenic abortion"), but it seemed mostly intended as a "feel good" piece - celebrating the erosion of the barriers between the mentally handicapped and the rest of society. What's a little "faith-based condescension" between friends, right?

No, Gerson has to take things a step further,

Dr. Andre Lalonde, the executive vice president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada, is "expressing concerns" that a "prominent public role model as the governor of Alaska and potential vice president of the United States completing a Down syndrome pregnancy may prompt other other women to make the same decision against abortion because of that genetic abnormality. And thereby reduce the number of abortions." This, Lalonde feels, would be problematic, because of women who aren't "prepared to deal with the consequences" of a Down syndrome child.

Many parents, of course, are not "prepared to deal with the consequences" of having a child, healthy or disabled - though this has nothing to do with the worth of such children once they are conceived. Down syndrome children are slow to learn and have physical challenges. They are also, in my experience, often loving and compassionate - which is an advantage they have on Dr. Lalonde.

Reading Gerson's rant, it occurred to me at this point that Gerson knows nothing about Dr. Lalonde, save for a second-hand account of his views on this single issue.

The original blog post Gerson found contained a (supposed) paraprhase of Lalonde's views,

He says not every woman is prepared to deal with the consequences of Down babies, who have developmental delays, some physical difficulties and often a shortened lifespan.

Gerson misrepresents these words as having come out of Dr. Lalonde's mouth:

This, Lalonde feels, would be problematic, because of women who aren't "prepared to deal with the consequences" of a Down syndrome child.

Worse, the author of that original blog post, Andrew Malcolm, didn't even get his facts straight. The post has been flushed down the memory hole, and replaced with a notice of error:

Doctor Lalonde's point of view should not have been portrayed as a concern that the number of abortions would decline but rather, as expressed in the Globe and Mail, that women would be influenced by Gov. Palin's decision to keep Down syndrome children that they were neither emotionally nor financially prepared to care for.

A columnist more intelligent or less lazy than Gerson might have even checked the original article before transforming an erroneous, second-hand paraphrase into a quote.

Giving women balanced information about the potential consequences of either decision does not mean they are being encouraged to abort their pregnancies, Dr. Lalonde said.

"We offer the woman the choice. We try to be as unbiased as possible," he said. "We're coming down to a moral decision and we all know moral decisions are personal decisions."

So yesterday we had Gerson lying about the statements of liberals, and using Christopher Hitchens, neither a liberal nor a Democrat, as his case in chief. Today we have Gerson fabricating a quote based upon another blogger's misinterpretation of a very simple article, to purport,

A claim like this one tears away the pretense of "choice" among some in the medical community.

At least Christopher Hitchens exists.

It's not a lie, as such, for Gerson to draw a false conclusion based upon what appears to be his incompetence - he apparently doesn't know the difference between a quote and a paraphrase, and doesn't have even a slight understanding of why you should check the purported sources of a blogger's information, particularly when the blogger hands you a link. He had a knee-jerk reaction based upon his preconceptions, and didn't much care about the morality or ethics of what he was doing. But to attempt to tar any portion of the medical community based upon something one doctor didn't even say? If somebody that incompetent worked for me, he would be looking for a new job.

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....

Lies, Lies and More Lies

From around the web:

• Dan Larison wonders why the conservative media is unwilling to call out lies by the McCain Campaign - Tell the truth? "Why do that when lying works so well for them"

• James Fallows asks whether the media will treat obviously false claims by Palin in the same manner as they treated obviously false claims by Hillary Clinton.

• Michael Kinsley asks, Why do Lies Prevail - the primary "reason is that no one - not the media, not the campaign professionals, not the voters - cares enough about lying."

"Some Media Reports", Indeed....

Sometimes media contortions to avoid contradicting political prevarications are unintentionally comical.

Memories....

Remember how last month the National Enquirer was being lauded in conservative circles for getting its facts straight, and for breaking important news stories that should be getting mainstream coverage? (No mention, of course, of the Enquirer's earlier "reporting" that Bush was "off the wagon".) Any second thoughts?

Tough Questions? We're Outta Here!

It's almost like I knew it was coming.... What's the problem with TV news that leads to so many softball interviews and an avoidance of even confronting obvious lies?

The problem is that news anchors almost never lay into anybody they expect to ever want back on the show.

The next thing I know, Campbell Brown has the fortitude to try to prove me wrong. ¹ But, alas....

This afternoon, anchorman Wolf Blitzer announced on air that McCain's planned interview with Larry King tonight had been canceled by the campaign. Blitzer said McCain aides complained that Brown had gone "over the line" in her grilling of Bounds.

McCain campaign spokeswoman Maria Comella later explained the cancellation with this sharply worded statement:

"After a relentless refusal by certain on-air reporters to come to terms with John McCain’s selection of Alaska’s sitting governor as our party’s nominee for vice president, we decided John McCain’s time would be better served elsewhere."

You know, eight years ago the name "McCain" was anything but synonymous with "chickensh...", well, you get the idea. There he is, trying to punish CNN for doing its job, because they refused to blandly accept the prevarication and evasions of his spokesman. Also, as mild as a Larry King interview can be, we can assume that McCain feared being asked the same question that left Tucker Bounds apoplectic.
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1. During her interview of McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, he purported about Palin, "She's been the commander of the National Guard, of the Alaska National Guard that's been deployed overseas, that's foreign policy experience".

Campbell Brown asked, "Can you just tell me one decision that she made as commander in chief of the National Guard. Just one".

The problem wasn't the question - it was that Tucker Bounds was caught lying about Palin's experience and hadn't anticipated being called out, and Brown didn't back down when he accused her of "belittling" Palin's record by even asking the question.

A Nice Effort

Given my recent comments about TV news, I should give Campbell Brown credit for trying to get McCain's professional liar spokesman to answer a simple question. Although she never got an answer, and Tucker Bounds got to sputter out various talking points before the cut to commercial, it was nonetheless a pretty effective impeachment.

I Hate TV News Channels, Part... I Lost Count

Okay, I don't spend all that much time vocalizing my contempt, but John Stewart got it right years ago.

Earlier today I saw an obviously partisan news anchor from a major cable channel toss softballs, no, really, marshmallows at a Presidential candidate. No cross-examination, no follow-up questions. He just tossed marshmallow after marshmallow, inviting the candidate to prattle, duck, weave, evade, mislead... whatever. But the anchor's partisanship isn't the real problem - if both candidates had to appear before the same anchors either this type of partisanship would have made the anchor look every inch the news-clown¹ that he is, or to at least a modest degree he would have had to lay into both sides. The problem is that news anchors almost never lay into anybody they expect to ever want back on the show.

And to be fair to real news anchors, there's some of the same on the Daily Show (which, as I watch almost no commercial television, I almost never see). John Stewart traditionally treated John McCain with significant respect and deference. I somehow doubt that McCain would expect that to continue, given how much fodder his campaign provides for comedy, so I don't expect to see him on the Daily Show any time soon. And yes, it's unfair to hold up the Daily Show as the standard for news interviews. But despite its faults and comedic focus, at least they occasionally hold a politician's feet to the fire.

A "showdown" like Saddleback doesn't solve the problem because, again, there's no follow-up. I heard people talking about how McCain "won" because he answered difficult questions with irrelevant passages from his stump speech or with one-liners. Had he been expecting a tough cross-examination, or even one of modest competence, he would have been much less apt to try that and at the end would have been unlikely to have looked like a "winner". But if those were the rules, he would not have agreed to participate.

Television news media in this nation? Truly pathetic.
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1. See the works of Phillip K. Dick, in which the news anchors had the honesty to actually put on clown suits before taking to the airwaves.

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.

This Is About Right....

Paul Krugman observes,

So the Obama campaign is going all out on the issue of McCain’s multiple houses. Isn’t that kind of stupid? Yes, it is - and it was also necessary.

Mainstream media, j'accuse!

Whining About Bloggers

Is it just me, or are the pundits, media figures and politicians who spend the most time whining about bloggers - and here I mean bloggers generally, not specific bloggers or blog posts, or blog coverage of a particular story or event - typically... Not very bright, not very careful with the facts, not very honest, or some combination thereof?

Why Isn't McCain Winning?

It seems like a fair question. A better question than, "Why doesn't Obama have an insurmountable lead?"

McCain had incredible advantages going into this race. He had (and has) many prominent medial figures in his corner, he has a reputation as a "maverick" and "straight talker" that has allowed him to avoid being tarred with G.W.'s record, he has a reputation for being strong on defense and national security, he has a long history of legislation he can point to as accomplishments. It was my opinion during the Republican primary, and I was far from alone, that he would be a strong Republican presidential candidate. Other than whining that Obama, also, is popular with the media, he tells us that Obama has none of his qualifications.

So why isn't McCain winning? Why can't McCain take and hold a lead?

Given that they are so happy to ask the same question about Obama, why don't prominent pundits or others in the media raise that question about McCain?

"But It Gets Worse...."

Why TV news in the US is utter rubbish.

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."

The Answer To Everything? A Series of Sound Bite Showdowns!

Today Fred Hiatt actually signs his name to a column on the presidential race. Looking at Obama's remark,

"So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He's risky. That's essentially the argument they're making."

Hyatt claims,

I was more struck by the preamble to that comment: by Obama's statements that McCain and the Republican Party are so bankrupt in policies that they can win only by spreading fear.

Except that Obama didn't say anything about the Republican Party - he identified policies associated with the President and the Presidential nominee. Isn't that the same thing, you ask? Perhaps Hiatt has forgotten the scathing attacks on Bush from within his own party, the efforts congressional candidates are making to distance themselves from Bush and his policies, various right-wing pundits trying to claim that he's really a "liberal", his 20% approval rating.... And perhaps he's forgotten the similar attacks on John McCain that preceded his winning the nomination. Only through an astonishing case of amnesia could you believe that the Republican Party as a whole marches in lockstep with Bush and McCain.

Really, Hiatt's assertion could be seen as an attack on McCain. Did you hear that, John? Fred Hiatt thinks there's not a whit of difference between what you stand for and the policies of G.W. Bush. Well, it would be an attack if Hiatt weren't so confident that the entire Republican Party shares those same views.... I suspect that what's really going on is that Hiatt largely shares those views, so he takes it personally that Obama (and most of the nation) see the Bush/McCain platform as having failed.

Hiatt proposes an interesting cure for Obama's dip in the polls, something he says "political practitioners" (but not himself?) "seemed to agree" resulted from McCain's "negative ads and petty misrepresentations" - a zillion or so "town hall" encounters with McCain.

The forums would return attention to the issues, where Obama believes he has a clear advantage. And if McCain sought to use them for personal attacks, he would at least have to bear full personal responsibility for doing so.

Really? I think the lesson of the zillion or so debates during the Democratic primary process is that fatigue sets in quickly - that voters lose interest - at which point the contest becomes "what sound bite can be best misrepresented" or "how can the moderator spice things up". If Obama wants to take the high road to McCain's low road, as a result of voter fatigue, media sensationalism aimed at breaking through that fatigue, and the media's preference for covering claims in what they later concede to be "negative ads and petty misrepresentations" as if they're the gospel truth, the zillion "town halls" create risk.

Take, for example, one of Hiatt's paper's star reporters, Dana Milbank, his happy repetition of one of the McCain campaign's favorite themes (Obama's being "presumptuous") and his misrepresentation of Obama's recent remarks. I understand why Hiatt wants Obama to feed that dysfunctional media machine, but since the primaries ended it seems to primarily serve McCain. Really - where's the upside for Obama?¹
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1. I do not intend to suggest that these two examples are representative of Milbank's work as a whole.
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Update: As if I needed another example of the media's irresponsibly helping to perpetuate a McCain campaign misrepresentation/smear, we now have insipid coverage of comments on tire pressure.

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 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?

If Martians Landed On The Earth, Would Obama Given Them Human Rights?

Here's how a conversation might go between a columnist and the Obama campaign:

Q. I have a question about Obama's health care policies?

A. Did you review the materials on our website?

Q. Of course. But I was hoping for a few more specifics on when the candidate might impose a mandate....

But the act of picking up the phone and dialing a number? It's too much for our poor columnists and their overstressed dialing fingers? Which is why we get this type of stuff from Ruth Marcus:

To read Obama's exams is to get a glimpse of the supple intelligence he would bring to the presidency and to be impressed by his lawyerly capacity - perhaps even compulsion - to see the other side's argument and mine the weaknesses of his own case.

But it is also a reminder of Obama's essential elusiveness, and how little we understand about how the candidate himself would resolve these thorny problems....

Reading them buttressed my confidence in Obama's capacity to grasp the nuances of any question, no matter how complex. They also underscored my sense that, in the hardest cases, I'm not always sure where Professor Obama, or President Obama for that matter, comes down.

I dunno. Maybe it's just me, but if I were a Washington Post columnist and thought one of his exam questions was that pressing, I would call him up and ask him about it. Would that make for too short a column?

Media Bias, McCain and Obama

In an interview that takes the term "softball" to a whole new level... Sean Hannity throws a series of marshmallows at McCain.

HANNITY: Even if Scott Rasmussen has a poll, 49 percent of Americans think the media is trying to help Barack Obama win. Only 14 percent think they're trying to help you win.

MCCAIN: The American people are very wise.

Poor John - he looks like he's about to faint from the medial pressure. Get the poor man something to drink - perhaps some coffee. Er, thanks, Ron Fournier and Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press, and thanks for also giving him donuts - let's get his blood sugar back up. But we're supposed to be buying into the notion that the media is not (or is it "no longer") John McCain's "base".

What's really going on with the media? Look at David Broder's latest:

It made no sense when Barack Obama left the country on his nine-day overseas tour for some of my fellow columnists to describe it as a high-risk venture.

* * *

So where was the risk? It existed mainly in the minds of some journalists and, perhaps, in the musings of Obama staffers who wanted to hype the journey.

Acknowledging all that, it is still the case that Obama is pulling off this trip in great style and thereby has enhanced his Oval Office credentials.

In other words, McCain goaded Obama into taking an international voyage that he would otherwise have forgone in the interest of campaigning right here in the United States, and the media's perspective that the trip could be a horrible mistake is crashing head-on with the fact that Obama has pulled off the voyage in grand style, managing to look informed, engaged, and (worst of all) Presidential.

Meanwhile, how has the press been treating McCain? Very well. They've given scant attention to a series of blunders and gaffes that would have triggered excoriating attacks on Obama. The stack is now so high that we may be reaching a tipping point, even on the network that edited a McCain interview to replace a bungled answer with an attack on Obama - and no, I don't buy the excuse that the wrong answer was inserted after the question because the editor felt time-pressured.

I think a lot of the criticism of McCain (or even Obama) for gaffes and misstatements, or ill-advised jokes or off-hand comments, is unfair. They're under what approaches 24 hour surveillance. They're working hours that (even with McCain's taking some time off on weekends) would be grueling for much younger men. It's pretty astonishing to me that they don't make more blunders under the circumstances. And by that measure, as long as it's a two-way street, I think it's reasonable for the media to focus on the major issues instead of blowing minor misstatements out of proportion.

Of course, that's not actually what the media's doing. News coverage of the campaign seems to be primarily focused on the campaign itself - "Is that campaign ad 'fair'?" "Which candidate is the media darling?" "What did McCain say about Obama's campaign today?" - it's effectively substance-free. If Obama had not gone to Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than hearing about those nations we would probably be hearing another story about the (supposed) diminishing importance of those wars to U.S. voters (in the face of a lack of media coverage). The last thing the public needs is a network that often reduces itself to a 24-hour free advertisement for the Republican party inviting McCain, in a kid gloves interview, to accuse the media of treating him unfairly. But that's what we're given.