My open letter to Senator McCain, with a note and action item at the end.
Dear Senator McCain:
After last night’s town hall debate, I noticed that you and Mrs. McCain spent only a few minutes mingling with the audience, before you quietly left. Meanwhile, Senator and Mrs. Obama remained in the venue, chatting and shaking hands with audience members, taking pictures with them, and signing autographs.
The fact that you were so quick to take your leave of people whose votes you presumably hope to win suggests to me that you have, whether consciously or unconsciously, already ceded the race to Senator Obama. This would not be an unreasonable thing to do, since despite the increasing viciousness of your campaign the polls are slowly but relentlessly moving away from you, with one state after another slipping into Senator Obama’s column.
As your fellow American, I therefore respectfully call upon you to finish the last weeks of this campaign with the dignity and honor you once held in the eyes of so many; so many who have since become bitterly disappointed in you as we have watched you sell that dignity and honor to the merchants of sleaze and smear.
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Senator McCain, please call off the personal attacks, and ask Governor Palin, your surrogates, and the 527 groups sympathetic to you, to do the same. These tactics can no longer win you the election; all they can do is to ensure that you lose it in disgrace and dishonor. You surely also know about the mob-like behavior displayed by some in attendance at your rallies in recent days, and that these dangerous and ugly taunts against Senator Obama and members of the press were incited by the speaker on the stage—you, Governor Palin, or one of your surrogates. In each of the cases that were reported in the news, you failed to respond thereby giving your tacit approval to that which any decent person should consider completely unacceptable.
For you and your campaign to continue to publicly say things that you now know incites this kind of hate, would not only be the height of irresponsibility; it would in fact be un-American. More troubling still, is the fact that this kind of behavior increases the risk to the safety, and perhaps the very life, of our likely future president—who would also be your future president.
For the remainder of this campaign, you should by all means continue to wage a vigorous debate on the issues. But for the sake of our deeply troubled nation which desperately needs its citizens to come together, for the safety of your opponent, for the ability of our next president—whether you or Senator Obama—to govern effectively, and for the sake of your own honor and the reputation by which you will be remembered—please stop the personal attacks. Please be vigilant against hateful taunts coming from your supporters, and if you become aware of them, you must make it clear to those responsible that you will not tolerate such behavior.
Senator McCain, please end this with honor.
That Anonymous Guy had a diary up earlier today, focusing on conservative commentator Kathleen Parker's piece in today's Washington Post titled "Call Off the Pit Bull". I recommend both the diary and the article to you.
However, I disagree with one point That Anonymous Guy made. With regard to the disturbing behavior being incited by the McCain campaign, he said:
It is an escalation that can only be stopped by those on the right who are courageous enough to take a stand and demand that the hatred stop.
While I wholeheartedly agree that the Right has a critical role to play here, and they absolutely should demand that these tactics stop, they are not the only ones who can stop it.
Senator McCain can stop all of it, today. He simply needs to make the decision to pull what is left of his honor off the scrap heap, dust it off, and assert his leadership as his party's standard-bearer. If there are free-lancers and rogue elements who refuse to listen to him, then he must publicly call them out and repudiate them.
Will Senator McCain do the right thing? Who knows. But the Right, and the Left, and the traditional media...in fact, all Americans, can play a role by speaking up and exerting pressure on Senator McCain. It is our votes, after all, that he still seeks to win.
Speaking of speaking up, here is an action item:
If you think this "for the sake of your honor, call off the attack dogs" theme might make a good Special Comment, please send that suggestion to Keith Olbermann at Countdown:
countdown@msnbc.com
Thanks for reading, and now let's go win this thing.
Update: To clarify something, in view of the comments--
I don't think there's any doubt that Senator McCain sees himself as a person of honor. My letter was intended to appeal to that self-image, not to imply that McCain is, or has been, an honorable person. The objective is to get him to call off the vicious attacks before they incite even worse behavior than they already have. It is my hope that appeals to his sense of honor, misplaced though it may be, might have some chance of making an impact.