Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain has been rapidly establishing a rampant pattern of inconsistency and outright contradictions, yet has essentially been receiving a free ride on it. I wrote about this Sunday.
Two days later, the Washinton Post's allegedly liberal columnist, Richard Cohen, wrote an editorial that provided an implicit -- and quite extraordinary -- rationale for this lopsided media focus, which lopsided focus he himself then exhibits in spades. Nor is this the first time Cohen has said something outrageous about a presidential election. And after the last time he did it -- contributing to the excessively negative and false stereotpying of Al Gore -- he spent several subsequent columns, years later, blaming others.
Cohen essentially argues that since he knows McCain had great character forty years ago, rampant inconsistencies really don't matter today.
But, as he also implicity argues, he is being eminently fair. Why? Because of his "keen eye:"
In some recent magazine articles, I and certain of my colleagues have been accused of being soft on McCain, forgiving him his flips, his flops and his mostly conservative ideology. I do not plead guilty to this charge, because, over the years, the man's imperfections have not escaped my keen eye.
In other words, Cohen points out, McCain's "imperfections" have not escaped his "keen eye." So much so that he pleads not guilty to the charge of being "soft" on McCain. And then proves it, by being ridiculously soft on McCain.
Additionally, this liberal "keen eye" took issue with McCain here, for the brief moment he did, on generic partisan terms; rather than the far more important and less partisan idea that McCain's constant pattern of abrupt and often highly inconsistent flip flops represents blatant pandering at best, and why the positions that he now says he holds, would continue to drastically lead America in the same direction we've been headed the past seven plus years. And not only that, McCain lists but a small fraction of the case against McCain -- and then, rather incredibly, writes "There, I said it all." This is either a blatant lie, or representative of profound ignorance.
He also offers the statement, "There, I said it all," as if he had to defend making the miniscule case that he did, and as if this means that he is able to and did engage in "balance," when this piece could serve as a poster child for its lack thereof.
The piece is entitled "McCain's core advantage." An "advantage," in no small part, because of inane pieces -- and hagiographic attitudes -- like this one.
But it is his explanation for it all, which, from a journalistic standpoint, is the most offensive part about the piece. (Cohen's apparently unwitting "keen eye" self satire notwithstanding; but then again this is the same Richard Cohen who, apparently oblivious to how the far right bastardized Al Gore in 2000 by falsely convincing the country that Gore is a liar who claimed he invented the Internet, in 2006 essentially committed similar unwitting satire when he essentially praised Gore for inventing the Internet, in a piece, coincidental to this being pointed out, which has now been aptly changed.)
What is Cohen's rationale?
It's also -- and more important -- that we know his bottom line. As his North Vietnamese captors found out, there is only so far he will go, and then his pride or his sense of honor takes over. This -- not just his candor and nonstop verbosity on the Straight Talk Express -- is what commends him to so many journalists. Obama might have a similar bottom line, core principles for which, in some sense, he is willing to die.
What’s McCain’s bottom line on torture, on which he has flip flopped, and pandered and moved to the right on. What is his bottom line on tax cuts which the person whose book he says he relies upon for his "transformation," brutally castigates the very same tax cuts as widlly irresponsible, and which McCain has nevertheless flip flopped on and now fully supports? What is McCain’s bottom line on the concept of habeas corpus, which protects the most fundamental of rights -- that is, against arbitrary or unlawful restraint or imprisonment, and extends as far back as the Magna Carta.
What is his bottom line on sending "hot bottled water to babies," "Putin’s presidency of Germany," or, as the candidate with the huge edge in fighting terrorism, according to the polls, the difference between Sunni and Shiite? What is his bottom line, in a campaign which has been dominated by the name Wright because Obama’s former pastor said some ridiculous political things, McCain was helped by pastor John Hagee, who said similarly ridiculous things, but whose political help McCain actively sought out...
What is his bottom line on oil, which on the one hand he now has flip flopped and wants to drill more of, but on the other says he wants to cut carbon emissions by 60 percent, which requires, essentially, using 60 percent less oil. What is his bottom line on political appointments, given a Supreme Court that has become more and more tilted to the Right, so that the one true conservative on it is now considered its center, and everyone else, including several Republican appointees -- who were themselves Republicans -- are now commonly (and erroneously) en masse referred to as the "liberals" on the Court, a few of whom are likely to shortly retire. And what is his bottom line when he claims that to this already far right tilted Court, that he would appoint Justices "just like" Alito, and Roberts.
What is his bottom line on a woman’s right to choose (one issue he apparently has not flip flopped on, and which a majority of the country, who do not favor abortion but who believe it is no man’s ultimate decision to tell a woman what to do with her own body and own unborn, do not agree with him on either. Update: Oops. Aparently he has flip flopped on this, as well; He has been a strong advocate of abortion exceptions in the case of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. And, in 2000, McCain "excoriated then-Gov. George W. Bush during a 2000 debate for not being willing to make this change" and include these exceptions in the platform. Yet, contradicting his professed views yet again, he is now following in Bush's lead himself, and the platform does not include these changes.)
What is his bottom line on Iraq -- on an Iraq that he once said we did not need to establish a U.S garrison in, and in which our continued presence was being resented? What is his bottom line on Iran, a young and at one point democratizing country that has been increasingly been made to feel it is being bullied? What is his bottom line on Cabinet appointments, when his campaign has been composed of increasingly far right wing figures with whom he once had large policy disagreements with?
What is his bottom line on a President‘s right to clandestinely violate the law as a policy, including the express will of the people through their own representatives in Congress, or even the Bill of Rights, because the President decides it is in the nation’s "national security" when it was precisely this type of thinking which the Constitution was established to prevent -- another position, which, if his increasingly radical campaign is to be believed, he has completely flip flopped on.
Nevertheless, according to Richard Cohen, "[Journalists] know his bottom line." Because, In other words, McCain was an honorable and courageous prisoner of war in his late 20's and early 30's, forty years ago, so his pandering and flip flopping today on almost every major issue imaginable does not really matter.
2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry was reasonably honorable when in his 20's, he was awarded the bronze star for valor and then came back and had the courage of his convictions to protest against the same war that he voluntarily served in -- a war where thousands of young, often underprivileged, American men, involuntarily conscripted against their will, were being sent off to die in what many describe as the Vietcong filled nightmarish jungles of SouthEast Asia -- and alienating some of the same soldiers whom he was trying to save in the process; because he believed (and most historians happen to agree) it was the right thing to do. So honorable that the press spent most of 2004 repeatedly exaggerating and sometimes grossly distorting Kerry's alleged flip flops, in markedly stark contrast to their treatment of McCain, now.
Yet this is not the first time Cohen has pulled this kind of crap -- saying he is not soft on McCain when he is beyond soft, calling out Obama's character on speculation, and giving McCain a free pass on everything.
Writing in 2000, Cohen stated:
There is something about Al Gore that people don't like (emphasis added). There is something that puts them off. They might admire him, respect him and even envy him, but "like" is a different story. On paper, this is no reason for him not to be president. But in reality, this is why he may never be. ["Al Gore's Distance," 8/17/00]
Think about that. Richard Cohen, a liberal, regarding an election where Al Gore was running against George Bush, started off a column with; "There is something about Al Gore that people don't like." Thereby helping to plant and cultivate this extremely influential and history changing meme with respect to the 2000 election. [With respect to the "facts" regarding those who knew Gore best that Cohen twistedly relies upon to perpetuate this falsity, Bob Somerby, with insider knowledge as someone who roomed with Gore and Tommy Lee Jones, absolutely rips Cohen's ridiculously irresponsible and misleading analysis apart.]
Of course, in the last year or two, Cohen has been slavishly praising Gore, and bemoaning the fact that he did not become President. Were McCain to win the presidency, and follow through on the polices that he has laid out as the new and improved far right John McCain, Cohen will also most likely be writing columns bemoaning this election as well.
And, of course, blaming others.
Just as he did in this 2007 column, ironically, pointing out that Gore was caricaturized by "[Cohen's] colleagues," seemingly unaware of his own role in helping to perpetuate a negative, and unfair, image of Al Gore -- when, after all, as McCain is implicitly trying to argue in his piece yesterday -- image is everything. Even when it has nothing to do with the facts.
In that same column, Cohen also writes "Gore who was universally seen as the flawed man." But he wasn’t. This was a perception the far right very effectively tried to create in order to make his otherwise lopsided race with an unknown, inarticulate but charismatic, rather right wing, and undistinguished governor from Texas, competitive. And it is something which -- as Sombersby (among many others, Left, Moderate Democrat, Center, and Moderate Right included) illustrates convincingly, the media lazily, and uncritically, and often serving as stenographers rather than journalists -- went along with. (Just as it did in 2004 with respect to the blatant mischaracterizations of Kerry.)
This is not that different from a Cohen column which originally called Stephen Colbert a coward for his searing satire of the Presidency and current media at the White House Correspondents dinner, which, again coincidental to a few letters to Cohen and the Post on this point or not, is a word that has been removed from his piece. A piece which also still states, even more ironically, that Colbert was "telling like-minded people what they already know and alienating all the others."
But Colbert, for the most part, only alienated those whom whether of like mind or not, had not done their jobs. Pointedly, Colbert was not speaking so much about the administration, but about the media itself. So if by "telling like minded people what they already know," Cohen meant the very same media to which of which he is a part, he and much of the rest of the media have a strange way of showing it.
More likely, Cohen did not even hear who it was Colbert was speaking to, or what it was he was really saying. Perhaps, in the context of this article regarding the lopsided coverage of McCain, now that Bush's presidency is almost concluded, and his approval ratings are exceedingly low, it is a good time to reconsider what it was, exactly, that Cobert said back in 2006:
The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know -- fiction."
When it comes to both partisan issues, as well as some of the more difficult issues of our times, including the idea of expanding unchecked power, the media has become not so much a check upon power, but, in some cases, a cheerleader (think FISA), and in other cases, merely a stenographer, for it.
This is a far cry from the (somewhat central to our Democracy) principle of the media serving as the Fourth Estate. And it is a far cry from what Jefferson meant when he said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
Presumably, he was not talking about stenographers, adulators, and parrots.