Lies, damned lies and campaign ads: how John McCain is playing rough
Updated on 14 September 2008
So much for the Straight Talk Express and the promise to 'do things differently'. John McCain has jettisoned that whole maverick-authenticity vibe faster than a category four hurricane and embraced the Rove-Schmidt mantra of negativity and daily attacks.
It's all about framing the debate, putting your opponent on constant defence - and garnering vast swathes of media time for each headline-grabbing attack, however flimsy, however unsubstantiated.
This isn't 2000, say campaign aides. Then, we lost. Now, "We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it."
The latest ad slams Obama (again, dubbed "the world's leading celebrity" ) for being "disrespectful" towards Sarah Palin. In suitably disturbed tone, the voice-over claims his campaign tried to dismiss her as "good looking".
So far, sounds so sexist. Except this is hardly the case - it was an off the cuff joke by Joe Biden, poking fun at his own reputation for being a bit vain by commenting that one of the differences between him and Palin was that she was really good looking.
Add to this a long list of false allegations by team McCain: that Obama supported "comprehensive sex education" for kindergartners, when in fact he backed calls for age appropriate sex education, such as warning them to be alert to the dangers of paedophiles and other inappropriate adults.
"We have no evidence that any of the claims we found to be false came from the Obama campaign."FactCheck.org
They claimed Obama wanted to raise taxes on the middle classes - when independent experts have agreed that his plans would mean lower such taxes. And they blew his admittedly unwise "lipstick on a pig" remark completely out of proportion - anyone who heard the original speech has made it clear there is no way he was referring to Governor Palin.
And now the highly respected organisation Factcheck.org has revealed that another McCain Palin ad - itself called 'Fact Check' tells blatant untruths. Over a photograph of a grim looking Obama, the ad quotes the FactCheck.org describing Obama's attacks on Sarah Palin as "completely false" and "misleading."
Except it didn't. Here's the justifiably outraged response:
"That's what we said, but it wasn't about Obama. Our article criticised anonymous email falsehoods and bogus claims about Palin posted around the Internet. We have no evidence that any of the claims we found to be false came from the Obama campaign."
The ad also quotes the Wall Street Journal as saying Obama's campaign sent a team of 30 lawyers to Alaska to "dig dirt" on the governor.
Except the campaign didn't. And the WSJ has been asked for an official apology.
"He runs a campaign not worthy of the office he is seeking."Barack Obama's spokesman Bill Burton
And the falsehoods continue to flood forth as the McCain team simply makes up foreign countries Sarah Palin is meant to have visited.
First it said she'd been to Iraq. Then she hadn't. Then perhaps she had briefly stepped 200 yards across the border while on her single foreign visit to see troops in Kuwait.
The campaign also claimed she'd been to Ireland. Well, only if you include the briefest of stops on the way back from the Kuwait trip while the plane refuelled.
Bloomberg also reports that the McCain campaign has invented false crowd estimates at some events - citing law enforcement officials who now say they've never given any estimates on attendance numbers.
At least the backlash has started - and not just the predictable moral outrage in the New York Times. The feisty presenters of The View hauled McCain over the coals for his dishonesty - Barbara Walters telling him flatly: 'They're lies'.
Obama's spokesman Bill Burton has accused McCain of "cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern presidential campaign history. His discredited ads with disgusting lies are running all over the country today. He runs a campaign not worthy of the office he is seeking."
But this was the race that was supposed to be run so differently: the 'old politics' that was meant to be left behind.
