As If Politics As Usual Wasn't Bad Enough
The Dallas Morning News Trailblazers blog has been posting stories on campaign fact-checking done by independent sites such as FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and news media like CNN. I've noticed that, more often lately, Barack Obama is being called out for stretching the truth. John McCain continues to be a serial offender, but the Obama campaign is now joining him more and more. I've also noticed that readers tend to dismiss campaign lies as just politics as usual, excusable because everybody does it.
It's true that all candidates are selective in their choice of and presentation of the facts. But there's something new this campaign. In the past, when the press catches a candidate stretching the truth, the candidate quits telling the lie or at least shifts the wording so it's technically true again. For example, last spring, Obama said McCain didn't care if the war in Iraq went on for a hundred years. The press pointed out that what McCain actually said was that he didn't care if a peaceful American presence in Iraq lasted a hundred years. Obama changed his stump speech.
That's not happening in the McCain campaign. Sarah Palin, for example, in her first speech after McCain announced her as his running mate, bragged about having said no thanks to the bridge to nowhere. In fact, Palin was a big supporter of the bridge and even after publicity doomed the project, still kept the money. When the press pointed that out, did Palin quit telling the lie? No. She repeated it word for word, incessantly, including in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. It's almost as if McCain and Palin don't care if they are caught telling bald-faced lies. That, in fact, may be exactly the case.
Jonathan Chait of The New Republic says that McCain spokesman Brian Rogers described media fact-checking this way: "We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it." Chait says Republican strategist John Feehery was even more blunt: "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. [...] As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."
Facts don't matter. Perversely, McCain considers it a plus for him to lie, if it's the so-called liberal elite media doing the fact-checking. It's a deliberate strategy to tell lies that the Times will report as lies, setting up an "us versus the elites" story line. That's what different this time around. Politicians may have always lied, but rarely did they do so openly, baiting the press to call them liars. This is the campaign being run by John McCain, the man who promised us an honorable campaign. That may have been the first, and biggest, lie of all.
The Joke's On Us
By now, every blogger in Dallas has had his fun ridiculing the New York Post and its columnist Cindy Adams for her story on George W Bush's house hunting in Dallas. According to Adams, he supposedly has settled on "a town outside Dallas called Preston Hollow, one of the wealthiest areas in the oil-rich state of Texas. Houses come with horse stables, lake views, mountain views, golf club views."
Everyone seems to be having a good laugh on those ignorant New Yorkers, without anyone recognizing that lack of familiarity with Dallas says more about Dallas than it does about New York. Dallasites may like to imagine that they live in a big, important, worldly city, but, in fact, to people who actually live in big, important, worldly cities, Dallas is nothing more than a stereotype. Laugh at the New York Post if you must, Dallas, but know that the joke's on us.
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