The McCain campaign's decision to lie about, well, everything, really needs to be understood as more than the outcome of John McCain's consuming ambition. It is a rational and obvious response to the rules laid down by the media. ...
Earlier this year McCain made poverty tours and offered policy speeches. No one cared, Obama retained his lead. It was only when he began offering vicious attacks and daily controversies that he began setting the pace of the coverage. ...
None of this, of course, absolves McCain of what he has done. He has sacrificed his honor and dignity with astonishing enthusiasm. ...Go ahead, read the full article, you know you want to.
Let this serve as a shout-out to my new favorite blog: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein
8 comments:
I think there's hope. McCain's "lie about every single thing you can think of" strategy is still fairly young. And while the media was more than happy to continue their normal format of letting pundits "debate" what the candidates said without any kind of fact check for a while, you're finally starting to see articles written about how insanely dishonest McCain's campaign has become.
My hope is that in the coming weeks, the lying becomes the story. I think you have seen it starting. If it gains critical mass among the news types, then hopefully the polls start turning in the right direction again. I mean...they have to, right? This country won't vote for someone whose policies have already been soundly rejected and is running solely on a platform of transparent, heavily-reported-on deceit, will it?
Andrew, you're refreshingly optimistic. If Americans are duped by all this ugly falseness and shameless but catchy sound-bites we deserve what we get.
Yeah, I hope so.
Although I'm not so sure I'm comfortable resting that hope on "en masse, the American public won't be idiots". We can be turned into an unthinking mob -- remember GWB got elected ... twice.
Not entirely fair, the Supreme Court virtually elected Bush the first time.
Let us not forget the success of the swiftboat campaign in 2004. If we learned anything from that election, it should be that people don't so much care about lying as long as they can convince themselves it's done for their version of the greater good.
... yet they seemed to care quite a bit about a lie made by a leader about a personal matter bearing little to no weight as to his capability and success in his elected position. Perhaps lying, and/or playing up lies is just more of a favorite in the Republican playbook. To quote a favorite bumper sticker "No one died when Clinton lied." It gives me chills to even think of the repercussions the lies told today will have in the future, if they have their intended effect.
Here's the difference in my mind...George Bush was dishonest, but his biggest lie (swift boats) had two important aspects--one, it involved an event that occurred many years ago, so that the truth wasn't right in everyone's face. Two, he wasn't generally the one who talked about it--he had all kinds of surrogates and 527s to make the claims for him.
McCain and Palin, on the other hand, are lying about facts that are easily verifiable (or in this case, debunkable). I mean...it's not even hard to verify them. Even the media can do it, hardly lifting a finger. Also, they're lying themselves, every time they speak or run an ad. Yes, they have a bunch of surrogates echoing their remarks, but their lies are coming directly out of their mouths.
It seems as though the all-important media narrative is finally starting to turn. The lies and unethical campaign, themselves, are becoming the story about McCain and Palin. So my hope comes from the belief that such a media narrative will get people to distrust McCain/Palin and realize how any honor that was ever attached to that ticket has been stripped away. Without honor, McCain has nothing.
Then again, I thought Kerry and Gore would win...
Well, I thought Gore did win?
Well, big-D, he caved before the Supremes. Pity, that.
Here's a "Gore invented the internet" moment for our crusty Uncle John... turns out he invented the Blackberry:
http://tinyurl.com/63y6q7
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