It needs to be said.
It isn't hyperbole.
John McCain has shit for honor.
His campaign has been the dirtiest, nastiest, most vile campaign of the modern era. His ads, from Britney Spears/Paris Hilton to the monstrosity in which John McCain himself approves of the message that Obama wants to teach comprehensive sex education to kindergarten classes are all the proof any thinking person needs to conclude that John McCain's vaunted and oft flaunted honor is ephemeral at best and a vicious, cynical deceit at worst.
The kindergarten ad is worse than the Willie Horton ad from the 1988 campaign - at least that add was factually accurate. Yes, there was a furlough program, yes, Willie Horton was accepted into the furlough program and yes, he did murder while on furlough. But the Willie Horton ad's sin is the sin of inference and of engaging the latent racism of its target audience. McCain's kindergarten ad on the other hand commits the mortal sin of explicitly communicating a despicable message that is intentionally and provably false. The bill in question required public schools to teach kindergarten age children the difference between "good" touch and "bad" touch so that pedophiles couldn't take advantage of them. With that single 30 second add John McCain has made a political liability of teaching children to protect themselves from pedophiles. Our politics, our media, and our culture are profoundly broken when this sort of attack fails to undo the candidacy of its practitioner.
But that ad is only the worst in a veritable outhouse gallery of turds. The Britney Spears/Paris Hilton ad - there are other vacuous celebrities beyond promiscuous, young white women aren't there? And then there is this McCain ad that features three white women talking about Obama's appealing physical appearance, describes Obama as "dreamy" and closes with the line "Hot Chicks Dig Obama." Is there any moral reason to run an ad with white women praising the attractiveness of a black male candidate? Could it be any more obvious? Could it be any more ignored or instantly forgiven by the traditional media?
And I'm sure we all remember when the McCain camp went apoplectic because Obama said that the republicans' strategy would be to make the american people afraid of him because he doesn't look like all the other presidents on the dollar bill. McCain surrogates and John McCain himself were on all the cable news shows claiming Obama played the race card and they weren't going to sit idly by while he victimized them like that! This became a multiple day media feeding frenzy - "Did Obama play the race card?!?!" But during all the wailing and gnashing of teeth was any energy expended by our glorious campaign media to dig up and make known this McCain ad - released prior to Obama's comments about the dollar bill - that puts Obama's face on the dollar bill! And on Mt. Rushmore, and on the Statue of Liberty! What reason is there to put Obama's face on the dollar bill other than to point out how different he is from the other presidential faces? Race card my ass. John McCain has been wielding a racial sledgehammer and Obama can't say anything without instantly turning on nationwide mega-watts of white resentment while the "liberal media" remains silent because the ratings, ad revenue and their corporate masters require a down-to-the-wire horse race.
It doesn't end there. As if more weight were needed to tip the scales, the McCain campaign is proudly unashamed of their strategy. Rick Davis, lobbyist and campaign manager admitted to the Washington Post just hours before the 2008 RNC in St. Paul, MN:
Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain's presidential bid, insisted that the presidential race will be decided more over personalities than issues during an interview with Post editors this morning.
"This election is not about issues," said Davis. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."
I don't want to ignore the Sarah Palin nomination for the Vice Presidency - it says far more about John McCain than it does about Sarah Palin. Especially when this was John McCain's argument for his candidacy in October 2007 while debating his republican rivals on FOX News:
"I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I've been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism," the Senator declared. "I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time."
Now, I'm definitely not one of the people who think that an inch-thick resume' is the most important thing when it comes to being a good president - I'm an Obama supporter, so you can be sure I harbor no ill will towards the Governor of Alaska because she doesn't have much experience. My issues with her are because she doesn't seem interested in, or even to have given much thought to any issue outside of the State of Alaska or the wombs of women. But it's John McCain whose campaign slogan is "Country First." It's John McCain who has repeatedly assailed Obama for having a short resume, asking in many of his ads, "Is he ready to lead?" and more than once he's impugned Obama's patriotism claiming that Obama would rather lose a war than lose a campaign. The question remains, given all his rhetoric about putting his country first, all his arguments against the Obama candidacy, how could he have chosen Sarah Palin as his vice president? The simple truth is that John McCain doesn't put his country first. John McCain would rather pick a vice president who could win a campaign than pick a vice president who would be best for the country, even by his own rigorously and publicly argued standards.
I would be delighted to hear any other explanations.
John McCain has also lied publicly about Gov. Palin's record. On ABC's "The View" just last Friday he repeatedly asserted that Gov. Palin had taken no earmarks during her time as Governor of Alaska:
Republican presidential nominee John McCain told the hosts of ABC's "The View" today that his running mate Sarah Palin had never sought earmarks from Congress while she was governor of Alaska, even though she had in fact asked for about $200 million for projects in her state and employed a lobbyist to help.
McCain has portrayed Palin as a reformer unwilling to accept pork from Washington. But Walters and Behar pressed. "She also took some earmarks,'' Walters said. "A lot," Behar added. "No, not as governor she didn't,'' McCain responded.
The funniest and most pitiful part about this is that Gov. Palin has publicly acknowledged and defended her gubernatorial earmarks. Per the LA Times:
This year, Palin, who has been governor for nearly 22 months, defended earmarking as a vital part of the legislative system. "The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship," she wrote in a newspaper column.
This year she submitted to Congress a list of Alaska projects worth $197.8 million, including $2 million to research crab productivity in the Bering Sea and $7.4 million to improve runway lighting at eight Alaska airports.
And, not only is the McCain campaign proudly unapologetic about about focusing the campaign on the "composite view" of Obama, but when pressed on their empirical falsehoods they don't try to prove that they are telling the truth - that would be admitting the truth had value - they merely state their utter ambivalence to it:
“We recognize it’s not going to be 2000 again,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, alluding to the media’s swooning coverage of McCain’s ill-fated crusade against then-Gov. George W. Bush and the GOP establishment. “But he lost then. We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”
Lastly, even Karl Rove, yes, that Karl Rove, admits John McCain is a liar:
"McCain has gone in some of his ads -- similarly gone one step too far," he told Fox News, "and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the '100 percent truth' test."
John McCain may well win the presidency in November, and if he does, it will be precisely because he refused to put his country first. But clearly, he's made the decision, despite years of proud preening on the Sunday morning news shows to the contrary, that the naked pursuit of power is paramount to him. Just as it is to almost every politician that he's lectured to through the years about virtue and honor.
But if Obama wins, a growing portion of the joy I receive from that event will be because John McCain trashed his precious reputation in vain.
John McCain has shit for honor.