Obama & McCain: Roads High & Low

In the last two presidential elections, third-party groups -- so-called 527s -- have played a very vocal, and very nasty roll. The most visible, and reprehensible, was the "Switfboating" of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in 2004. As Barrack Obama has taken the mantle of the Democratic nominee for the presidency, he has swiftly and deliberately moved to squash the movement of 527s working in his favor. This may or may not prove to be a good political move, but it most certainly speaks to the Illinois' Senator's character and belief in running a moral campaign. If John McCain actually does more than give lip service to the same ends, I'll eat my shorts with sauce.

So far, McCain has taken the low road at every point in the campaign, even where other options have been available. He actively sought out the endorsement of religious freak-show John Hagee, coveting his followers while "distancing" -- but not really, wink wink -- himself from his crackpot views.

He has made Senator Joe Lieberman his go-to hatchet man. Lieberman, who is an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq and who has as much of its resulting blood on his hands as anyone else, loves to utilize his reputation for personal piety as a cloak just as he shivs his political opponents. Lieberman is to piety in politics what child-molesting Catholic priests are to the smooth, wholesome running of a victimized parish.

Finally -- for now -- McCain has continued to twist Obama's words when it comes to matters of foreign policy, a practice which flies in the face of the Arizona Senator's own promise not to do so. (I think part of the reason that he does this is that McCain, for all of his much-lauded military service, as well as his committee posts in the US Senate, really doesn't know much about foreign policy as it now stands in a post 9/11 world.) Instead of learning from President George W. Bush's attacks on him in the 2000 Republican nomination campaign -- namely learning that the politics of destruction are an outright attack on America itself -- McCain has chosen to embrace all of the dehumanizing machinations that sadly made Bush/Cheney so effective at railroading the nation. Today, he incorrectly -- both in terms of the facts as well as in terms of the policy -- twists the words of Obama, while echoing yet more divisive words from our president. (And note that Lieberman jumped right in again with his knife.) If anyone doesn't think that on the basis of their shared abject immorality alone that a McCain presidency would just continue the "Bush Two" years in power, I ask for you to provide any hope in the negative.

Special Note: If I were a betting man, I'd place short odds on Lieberman being McCain's running mate for the general election.

15 May 2008

Addition: An interesting take on a subject noted above from a TPM reader:

When President Bush decries "the false comfort of appeasement," and John McCain raises the spectre of Neville Chamberlain, they're deliberately advancing a fallacious line of argument. Appeasement - the acceptance of conditions imposed by an aggressor in lieu of open conflict - is not the result of negotiation, but of capitulation. And the inverse proposition - the rejection of all negotiation even at the price of open conflict - is just as rigidly obtuse. We call it war-mongering.

I don't particularly mind that our President has chosen to air a domestic dispute abroad - that's his perogative. And I've always been miffed by the notion that foreign policy is for the experts, and too delicate a matter to be subject to public debate or the people's will - what the establishment terms 'politicization.' But I'm incensed that the coverage has focused on whether or not Obama's support of negotiations constitutes appeasement, as if this were subject to dispute. It's not. He has never proposed giving in to our enemies. His support of negotiation constitutes, ipso facto, a rejection of appeasement.

There are not two valid sides to this dispute. For the media to accede to this kind of slander, just because it's what the GOP demands, well, it borders on appeasement.

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