One thing that I\u2019ve found interesting in the past week has been the zeal with which the McCain campaign has gone with the \u201clying to the American people\u201d strategy. Whether it\u2019s choosing to have Sarah Palin continue repeating the \u201cBridge to Nowhere\u201d lie or John McCain running ads against Obama that are chock-ful-o-lies, the McCain camp decided last week to go all-in on the lying strategy, betting that the Obama campaign and, more important, the press wouldn\u2019t call the bluff.<\/p>\n
But both did. And the lies were so audacious, so over-the-top, so clearly lies that the press has taken a giant step back from John McCain, and granted him the adversarial relationship he\u2019s been claiming in the face of all evidence.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s data point in this shift is long-time tire-swing devote\u00e9 Richard Cohen, who pretty much repudiates McCain as sharply as he can<\/a>:<\/p>\n The precise moment of McCain\u2019s abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on \u201cThe View,\u201d the daytime TV show created by Barbara Walters. Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running. One deliberately mischaracterized what Barack Obama had said about putting lipstick on a pig \u2014 an Americanism that McCain himself has used. The other asserted that Obama supported teaching sex education to kindergarteners.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that those two ads are untrue,\u201d Behar said. \u201cThey are lies.\u201d<\/p>\n Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. He has largely been avoiding the press. The Straight Talk Express is now just a brand, an ad slogan like \u201cHome Cooking\u201d or \u201cWe Will Not Be Undersold.\u201d Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation \u201cI approve this message\u201d was just boilerplate. But he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cActually, they are not lies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Actually, they are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, let me remind you, that\u2019s not some guy with a website saying that. It\u2019s Richard Cohen, WaPo denizen and inveterate blog-hater<\/a>. He\u2019s the guy who put the \u201cconventional\u201d in \u201cconventional wisdom.\u201d So when he writes stuff like this:<\/p>\n McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains \u2014 his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that\u2019s all \u2014 but just as honorably. No more, though.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Or this:<\/p>\n McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir \u2014 the person in whose hands he would leave the country \u2014 is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Or this:<\/p>\n \u2026McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can \u2014 as he did in South Carolina \u2014 renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won\u2019t work. Karl Marx got one thing right \u2014 what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, let\u2019s just say that the worm has turned.<\/p>\n The lying gambit could have worked. Had the McCain camp been more willing to wait for the election to draw near, they could have used lies and distortion in the waning days of the campaign to swing the election their way. But they got impatient. And they pulled the trigger on the strategy too hard, too early. And in doing so, they made what could prove to be a catastrophic miscalculation.<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve written many times, there are two John McCains. \u201cJohn McCain\u201d is an honorable, likable guy, a conservative, sure, but not an asshole about it. He\u2019s able to work across the aisle, listen to and respect his opponents, and generally behave in an honorable fashion. \u201cJohn McCain\u201d disappeared in 2006, replaced by John McCain: a nasty, surly jerk who\u2019s willing to lie, cheat, and steal his way to the presidency. Up until last week, the media wanted very much to believe that the real John McCain was \u201cJohn McCain.\u201d But now, with McCain standing behind the lies and deceit of his campaign, there\u2019s no hiding the fact that the guy calling himself John McCain these days is not honorable.<\/p>\n And this is a problem \u2014 because honor was the one thing McCain could sell, the one thing he had that no other Republican could offer. Absent that, he\u2019s Mitt Romney with a war record, George W. Bush, only grumpier. And absent that, it will be very easy for Americans to decide that\u2019s not the kind of change we can believe in.<\/p>\n McCain basically dared the media to go after him last week. And while the media in America is a docile creature, it still can charge when provoked. All indications are that the media now feels it\u2019s being played, and it will respond by treating McCain like the politician he is, not the demigod he was. And that means that the American public will hear often over the next seven weeks about how big a liar McCain is, and how he picked a liar for a sidekick, too. That\u2019s pretty mavericky, if by \u201cmaverick\u201d you mean \u201cdouchebag.\u201d But that\u2019s John McCain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One thing that I\u2019ve found interesting in the past week has been the zeal with which the McCain campaign has gone with the \u201clying to the American people\u201d strategy. Whether it\u2019s choosing to have Sarah Palin continue repeating the \u201cBridge … Continue reading