Election roundup
My apologies to my readers who are anxious to read my analysis of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. I’m getting to it. In the meantime, these three articles on the McCain campaign caught my eye and express my feelings much better than I could. All three are worth clicking through to.
All politicians stretch the truth, massage it into the best fit with their message. But, let’s face it, John McCain is running a campaign almost entirely based on straight up lies. Not just exaggerations or half truths but the sort of straight up, up-is-down mind-blowers we’ve become so accustomed to from the current occupants of the White House … John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let’s stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We’ve got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They’ve both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office. Democrats owe it to the country to make clear who these people are. No apologies or excuses. If Democrats can say at the end of this campaign that they made clear exactly how and why these two are unfit for high office they can be satisfied they served their country.
So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush’s war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country … McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement … McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain – no one else – has proved it.
Crooks. That’s the only word for it. There’s no noble or higher purpose here, there’s nothing admirable about it, not even in the most brutal, Machiavellian sense. They’re liars. They’re crooks. It is taken as a Republican given that anything that can gain power is justifiable, regardless of how loathsome it is or how depraved the fabrication … If we welcome open, direct lies into our political discourse, it’s not political discourse anymore — just the oratorical equivalent of an organized crime ring. McCain knows he can lie through his teeth and almost nobody will truly call him out on it — at least, not compared to all the people who will hear the lie. That’s been the strategy for every election involving the old Nixonites, from then until now, and there’s no chance it’s going to go away until there is a price to be paid for being a nationally televised liar. So when’s that going to be?