TPM Reader EH …
I think I’m the first one to say it: “honorgate”. Presumably somebody will ask Obama about this today. I hope his response is something like, “look, I don’t know how Senator McCain defines honor, but it’s worth asking: is it honorable to characterize a bill to protect children from sexual predators as ‘teaching sex-ed to kindergarteners’? Is it honorable to accuse your opponent of wanting to lose a war to win an election? Is it honorable to repeat the same lies day after day on the campaign trail, long after they have been proven false?”
Needless to say I’ll be extremely unhappy if Obama does anything to distance himself from those comments or to come across as apologetic.
We’re still talking about honor with this guy? Face it. This guy is running the sleaziest presidential campaign of our lifetimes. McCain and Palin are out their lying their heads off. Liars have no honor.
Late Update: BL has an idea too …
I know responding to a scurrilous attack with a “he did it to” defense doesn’t help knock down the original falsehood, but why isn’t someone bringing up McCain’s past with women? The Chelsea Clinton – Janet Reno ugly joke? How about the gorilla rape joke? Leaving his crippled wife for a beauty queen? Dating exotic dancers – per Fred Thompson?
This man not only has no honor. He has no shame. He’s the prohibitionist who rails against the drink in public but gets wasted every night in private.
Normally it might not be appropriate for the press to dig into McCain’s ugly past with women. But when he’s out there like a preening fraud tossing out phony charges of sexism they really have no choice.
Late Update: Let’s remember, this is the same John S. McCain who had a good belly laugh with a supporter and called it a “good question” when the supporter called Hillary Clinton a “bitch.”
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm will play the role of Sarah Palin in Joe Biden’s veep debate practice rounds. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.
One of the interesting aspects of this campaign is watching the scales fall from the eyes of many of John McCain’s closest admirers among the veteran DC press corps. I’m not talking about the freaks on Fox News or any of the sycophants at the AP. I’m talking about, let’s say, the better sort of reporters and commentators in the 45 to 65 age bracket. To the extent that the press was McCain’s base (and in many though now sillier respects it still is) this was the base of the base. And talking to a number of them I can understand why that was, at least in the sense of the person he was then presenting himself as.
But over the last … maybe six weeks, in various conversations with these folks, the change is palpable. Whether it will make any difference in the tone of coverage in the dominant media I do not know. But it is sinking in.
All politicians stretch the truth, massage it into the best fit with their message. But, let’s face it, John McCain is running a campaign almost entirely based on straight up lies. Not just exaggerations or half truths but the sort of straight up, up-is-down mind-blowers we’ve become so accustomed to from the current occupants of the White House. And today McCain comes out with this rancid, race-baiting ad based on another lie. Willie Horton looks mild by comparison. (And remember, President George H.W. Bush never ran the Willie Horton ad himself. It was an outside group. He wasn’t willing to degrade himself that far.) As TPM Reader JM said below, at least Horton actually was released on a furlough. This is ugly stuff. And this is an ugly person. There’s clearly no level of sleaze this guy won’t stoop to to win this election.
And let’s be frank. He might win it. This is clearly a testing time for Obama supporters. But I want to return to a point I made a few years ago during the Social Security battle with President Bush. Winning and losing is never fully in one’s control — not in politics or in life. What is always within our control is how we fight and bear up under pressure. It’s easy to get twisted up in your head about strategy and message and optics. But what is already apparent is that John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let’s stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We’ve got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They’ve both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office. Democrats owe it to the country to make clear who these people are. No apologies or excuses. If Democrats can say at the end of this campaign that they made clear exactly how and why these two are unfit for high office they can be satisfied they served their country.
Following up on the post below, it seems Joe Klein agrees, calls McCain’s latest “one of the sleaziest ads I’ve ever seen in presidential politics.” There’s just no getting around it at this point, the man is not morally fit to serve as president.
I can’t understand the rationale for Obama to clarify his “lipstick on a pig” remark first thing this morning at the top of his speech. It was a good line. It riffed off of Palin’s lipstick/pitbull line in her acceptance speech. It was pointed, sure. But so what?
Yes, Obama sort of laughed it off and dismissed the criticism with some elan. He wasn’t overly defensive about it, but he was still playing defense. His whole orientation is wrong. Today, you come up with a good new line. You play off of the previous day’s good line. You keep moving the ball forward.
The McCain camp is running an ad linking Obama to sex and children — and Obama is taking valuable time at the beginning of his speech to explain how he wasn’t really indirectly calling Sarah Palin a pig?
As Begala says: Attack! Attack! Attack!
She just repeated the Bridge fib one more time.
Even last night, it was so bad even Chris Matthews started a count for how many times she’s done it …
In his new ad out today John McCain makes Katie Couric complicit in his new smear ad, another flat out lie. Is she going to speak out on this? Or mum’s the word? Don’t want to interfere?
We’re clearly into the white water rafting phase of the 2008 campaign. But while we’re keeping up to speed on the craziness, I wanted also to make sure you check out our TPMCafe Book Club this week on Bernard Avishai’s new book The Hebrew Republic: How Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace at Last. You can dive in with the latest post in the discussion, from The New Yorker’s Rick Hertzberg. You won’t want to miss this conversation or this post.
He’s using different words. But it sounds like one-time McCain fan Andrew Sullivan has come to the same conclusion I have (see below): he’s morally unfit to be president.
He says it well too.