"[The] two things I will never do are lie to the American people, or put my electoral interests before the national interest"
- John McCain
That's a quote from John McCain made to Carl Bernstein in 2000. In 2008 it is laughable. The transformation of McCain from who he was in 2000 to who he is now is total and complete. John McCain is now completely unrecognizable from the man he once was. I'm not talking about the changing of his position on some (most) on issues. I'm talking about an abandonment of the deepest core values that McCain once professed. The following is an examination the two things which McCain claimed were sacrosanct: straight talk and putting country first.
John McCain, he of the Straight Talk Express, has completely abandoned the truth in his quest to reach the Oval Office. Jonathan Chait of The New Republic writes an excellent article on McCain's lies entitled Liar's Poker, of which I'll excerpt selected paragraphs. McCain has gone from claiming that he would never lie to the American people, to reaching a place where the campaign he heads openly admits that the truth is irrelevant.
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said this to Politico about the increased media scrutiny of the campaign's factual claims: "We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it." Republican strategist John Feehery made the point even more bluntly, telling The Washington Post: "The more The New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there, and the bigger truths are: She's new, she's popular in Alaska, and she is an insurgent." Then, he added, "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."
Translation: we are trying to create a narrative that people will accept as the truth, and if the narrative is successful (i.e. McCain puts country first, and Palin is a reformer) the actual truth and the media's attempt to convey it won't matter. There is ample evidence from the McCain campaign of this attitude. It's seen in their continued spouting of widely debunked talking points and blatant lies (we all know the list: bridge to nowhere, Obama wants to raise your taxes, Obama called Palin a pig, Obama has done nothing on this economic crisis, etc, etc). The lies have become so obvious even the ladies on The View had to call McCain out to his face for them.
As the New Republic article mentions though, looking at McCain's tactics from a purely amoral point of view, McCain's strategy isn't entirely bad. Oh sure, there's a threshold he risks crossing in which he might go to far and be thought of as being a liar by the general public, but short of that many of his lies will find traction in the minds of low information voters (especially with the help of his friends in talk radio and on Fox News) and they won't be easily be dislodged by the truth. In his artice, Jonathan Chait cites a study which finds:
That lies work. When subjects were confronted with an untrue political claim respondents naturally moved toward those positions. When the lie was corrected, however, the effect of the untruth in moving opinions largely remained. The truth, in other words, is no antidote for a lie.
Their second conclusion was even more disturbing. Subjects who identified as politically conservative were not only immune to the effects of having a lie corrected, the correction made them even more likely to believe a lie.
[snip]
If this finding is broadly correct, then the media's newfound willingness to fact-check McCain will only succeed in rallying the GOP base to his side.
It's not surprising that McCain's tactics are effective to some degree, that amorally they make sense, why else would he do them? But morals were supposed to be a core element of who John McCain is. His morals are the most compelling aspect of his biography which he loves (for others) to tell. John McCain heroism is largely based on the fact that he wouldn't abandon his core convictions. That John McCain seems to be long gone. How can one reconcile the McCain who values honor above all else, to the McCain we see vying for office. Chait offers an answers:
All this dishonesty can be understood not as a betrayal of McCain's sense of honor but, in an odd way, as a fulfillment of it.
McCain's deep investment in his own honor can drive him to do honorable things, but it can also allow him to believe that anything he does must be honorable.
[snip]
McCain views himself as the ultimate patriot. He loves his country so much that he cannot let it fall into the hands of an unworthy rival. (They all turn out to be unworthy.) Viewed in this way, doing whatever it takes to win is not an act of selfishness but an act of patriotism. McCain tells lies every day and authorizes lying on his behalf, and he probably knows it. But I would guess--and, again, guessing is all we can do--that in his mind he is acting honorably. As he might put it, there is a bigger truth out there.
If Chait's analysis of McCain's motives is correct than the prospect is terrifying and brings to mind the worst aspects of the Bush presidency. An administration that thinks it alone knows how to keep the country safe, and any action it undertakes; falsifying evidence, outing a CIA agent, illegal wire tapping, torture, is justified because they believe themselves to be honorable people acting in the best interests of the country. This is the logical conclusion of campaigns that think nothing of lying to the American people.
McCain's second claim is that he would never put his electoral interests ahead of the national interest. It is largely this point that Carl Bernstein focuses on in his Huffington Post article The Palin Pick - The Devolution of McCain, from which the remaining block quotes will be from. There are numerous examples of McCain putting his electoral interest ahead of national ones in his campaign, but none is more blatant than his vice presidential selection of Sarah Palin. It's hard to know what McCain actually believes these days, but I am inclined to believe that he is sincere in his statements that these are dangerous times. That there are numerous threats, known and unknown, that face our country and that it is imperative that the country have strong leadership in the White House. In this environment, it is unconscionable that McCain selected Sarah Palin to be his running mate. As is now clear to everybody, Palin is woefully ignorant in matters of national security. Bernstein states it like this:
It is time to confront an awkward but profound question: whether in picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has committed -- by his own professed standards of duty and honor -- a singularly unpatriotic act.
"I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war," he has said throughout this campaign. Yet, in choosing Palin, he has demonstrated -- whatever his words -- it may be permissible to imperil the country, conceivably even to "lose" it, in order to win the presidency. That would seem the deeper meaning of his choice of Palin.
McCain's pick of Palin was nothing more than desperate attempt to grab the spotlight from Obama and inject some energy into his flagging campaign. Again from an amoral perspective the choice has some merit. It succeeded in firing up the Republican base and ensured the support of the Christian right. Palin's personal story of being a young, attractive, outdoorsy small town mom appeals to some independents as well, but with independents that appeal is quickly losing it's lustre as Palin's own lies, scandals, radical positions, and inability to get through an interview unscathed come to light. Palin may yet end up helping McCain's electoral interests, but there is no case you could make that the pick of Palin helps further the national interest. Especially not when you factor in the alternatives that McCain had to choose from. People such as Lieberman and Ridge who despite their political leanings are at least familar with the Bush doctrine, and have had more than a passing interest in national security prior to last month. Carl Bernstein, who covered McCain's 2000 campaign, concludes with this:
John McCain is a serious man, as anyone who has spent time with him knows. But he has not run the kind of serious campaign he once promised.
Not for the first time, as many of his fellow Republicans (as opposed to friendly reporters and sympathetic Democrats) had long maintained, McCain's more reckless inclinations and lesser impulses prevailed. A great political movement that would transcend rabid partisanship and hard ideology does not seem in the cards.
[snip]
Ultimately it is the choice of Palin, made in the moment when action speaks loudest, that may undermine a quarter-century of assertions by John McCain about the preeminence of duty, honor and country in his political schema.