So the "John McCain is a liar" meme seems to have caught on. While some might not want to get overly philosophical about what this means, I think it raises a number of interesting questions about the media, politics, morality and government. For reasons I'll go into below the fold, this is HUGE. At the same time, we here on the left need to draw the right lessons and push our advantage properly. Obama promised to campaign on the issues, but that has become a moot point. Why bother debating someone on the issues when people decide that your opponent might take the opposite stand the next day?
I've been reading KOS since 2005, but this is my first diary. I apologize in advance for any newbie-mistakes.
The History
The importance of honesty in modern politics has been rather uneven. Kerry got slammed for being a flip-flopper while Bush (and Republicans in general) got a free ride for years. The dynamics of this partisan double-standard are complex. Obviously, fighting for the little guy (as good Dems always do) meets with more resistance than maintaining the status quo. That's life. Get over it.
There is, however, a whole different side to the issue. As many of us who are closer to the "chattering classes" know, there's a philosophical justification for the aforementioned double standard. Political coverage has obviously been influenced by postmodernism, relativism and the idea that there is more than one way to look at the world around you. You see this kind of thing in a statement like Rumsfeld's infamous "we create our own reality" comments in the run-up to the Iraq war.
When weak-willed political-desk reporters get ahold of these ideas, you get our current media's practices. The guy on the politics beat writes down what each candidate says and presents the competing claims without weighing in on one side or the other (this is what passes for "objectivity"). When fact checking is done, it tends to be ghettoized into special articles buried at the back of the newspaper (or in the "politics" tab--where only the converted dare to tread). The effect is that the low-info voter (our holy grail) remains totally in the dark on such matters.
So, you may be asking, why was Kerry lambasted for being a liar? Well, to be brief, he wasn't. He got in trouble for disagreeing with himself. Sure it was unfair and mostly related to the nuances of his proposals exceeding people's attention spans, but I digress. If it had been true, it would have been a serious charge. Even our devoted Washington stenographers get worried about THAT kind of thing. The only shred of common sense left inside the beltway is that:
[Statement of Candidate C] at Time T1 = [Statement of Candidate C] at Time T2
Or, at the very least, you should be able to explain the difference. What's the point in voting if you don't know what a person will do once in office?
The McCain Camp's mistake
So, enter McCain. The republicans have been running dishonest campaigns for decades. But the thing about their lies is that, traditionally, they were good at keeping them straight. As long as they stayed "on message" the repetition of the same lies should (in the perverse world of the MSM) have proved that McCain was a straight-talker. Of course, as many people here pointed out starting this summer, the existence of youtube made it all the more important for candidates to be consistent lest they find themselves featured in a youtube debate with themselves. Poor, technophobic McCain never saw it coming...
It was not a foregone conclusion that the "John McCain is a liar" meme would catch on. That took his panic-induced pick of a certain inexperienced, fundamentalist, big-spending, tax-increasing governor. When they woke up and realized what they had done the next morning, I'm assuming they freaked out even more (I admit I'm psychologizing without any basis, but I find that fear and dishonesty often go together--especially stupid "no, mom I don't have a cookie behind my back" lies). In one fell swoop, the whole Republican narrative came down around them. This lady had built her career being the kind of Republican that McCain had built his career pretending to fight.
In what I hope will be the biggest political blunder of the early 21st century, the Republican party switched narratives overnight. When the Daily Show and the Colbert Report began showing the same people uttering diametrically opposed positions on issues surrounding the Palin pick, we knew there was blood in the water. When the "Bridge to Nowhere" lie came to light, it was too undeniable for even the MSM to ignore it. Yet McCain-Palin were stuck and kept using the lie. Ironically, Palin found herself in Kerry's situation (except she WAS guilty of flip-flopping). People could (and did) run back to back quotes that took opposite positions on an issue. KEY POINT:
THE MEDIA DID NOT START CARING ABOUT THE TRUTH: THE REPUBS STOPPED CARING ABOUT CONSISTENT MESSAGING
Once a liar...
Once a liar, always a liar. When you base your whole campaign on a huge whopper (and get caught) no one can trust anything you say. All of a sudden, Low Info voters will begin question anti-Obama smears, McCain's claims about where he stands on the issues, and even the man's own biography. If he can't keep straight which football team's lineup he gave to his captors instead of revealing his comrade's names, how do we know they ever asked for the names? How do we know he didn't just give up his friends because he was in pain? (not that there's anything wrong with that, BTW...)
The point is that, if we get this meme to stick, we win. Game over for McCain. Your average American doesn't share the fucked up world-view that dominates the MSM. We live by our word. We have nothing else. You can take away an American's job, you can take away their health care and pension, but you can't take away their honor. We want our leader to represent that, right?
Or as Abe Lincoln said:
"If you don't stop lying about me, I'll start telling the truth about you!"