There's a lot of outrage here over McCain's recent lies about Obama's character. Why are we outraged? There's a reason McCain (really, Steve Schmidt) employs this method of contesting elections. It's the same reason Rove does so. Because it works.
And that, to the GOP, winning elections is more important than any sense of normative sense of honor. Their norms are policy, not personal. They will be judged by the laws they enact, and by their victories, not by the way they run campaign. Getting their hands dirty is a means to an end, not an ends in to themselves. And if the left doesn't have the same compelling urgency to win, the left will continue to lose elections. After all, the people most hurt by the Bush economy were voting Democratic anyway. And people are good, and like to believe themselves that. Most of them supported the Iraq War, and if the media can tell them it might have been "won," then Obama won't win on that issue either. Like it or not, this election won't be decided by issues, even as Democrats have an edge on them.
Many years ago, Thurman Arnold wrote the Folklore of Capitalism. In that book, he basically said that normative politics is an illusion, that people argue based on identitiy, and that what's right or fair doesn't matter. It is a very compelling book.
McCain will call Obama sexist, he will call him a communist, he will probably even call him a closet Muslim before this race is over. They will accuse him of the dirtiest and disgusting things. None of it will be true, and it doesn't even matter if there is any evidence that might suggest it is.
But...IT WILL WORK. Obama will lose. If this election is about whether Obama is sexist, he will lose. If this election is about whether Obama is a muslim, he will lose. And the media will present it all as legitimate questions. If the Bridge to Nowhere didn't show you that, nothing will.
It's why I sat there during the DNC, and saw everyone talk about what a decent man McCain was, and thought, "we're really going to blow this."
Now, winning by MAD may not be the best way of winning, so the Obama campaign may need to keep his hands dry. But the only way Obama can fight back is if people are accusing McCain of being a racist. Of being a Manchurian candidate. Of being sexist himself. Of lying about his past, lying about his heroism, lying about even the most trivial things.
Likewise, the only way McCain could fight back is if that accusations of Palin must be intensely personal, but not sexist. Palin is an antisemite. She hates gays (regardless that she vetoed a hate crimes bill, it doesn't matter).
The backfire these days, is not about the truth. It's not about fairness. It's simply whether it comes across as offensive or mean. DailyKos gets attacked when a random commentator jokes about Cheney's death or accuses Palin of something in a way that can be spun as the commentator being sexist.
Obama's criticisms of McCain's character are a good start - and have the coincidence of being true - but its little and its late. We need more. And remember, at the end of the day, whether these criticisms are true are BESIDES THE POINT.
Welcome to post-modern politics. It's unfortunate - a prisoner's dilemna of sorts. By playing the game we all lose. But if we don't play it, McCain will, we also lose.
I'm not advocating lying. If forced to call it one way or another, I'd probably say almost better to lose than to join in the GOP's destruction, that at SOME point the people will say enough is enough, that all of Tuchman's Marches of Folly eventually did end, and that a few decades of GOP rule will be like the dark ages, a necessary element before a reformation that will allow us to implement our ideas with complete control.
I'm simply describing what happens when one lies. Talking about it like it's a normative bad ignores the fact that it's a positive good. Let's keep that in mind, before we sit around on January 20, 2009, asking what happened.