Thursday, September 18, 2008

McCain's Outrageous Accusation

I don't know if he's said it before, but I heard John McCain say yesterday words to the effect that Barack Obama doesn't care about this country; he only cares about being elected president. Whether you're a McCain supporter or not, do you believe that he should be making such assertions? Or do you agree with me that this egregiously steps over the line of legitimate political discourse?

I've never heard Obama make such claims about McCain. Have you? And if he ever were to do it, I can imagine that there would be a firestorm of protest.

McCain supporters might argue that Obama doesn't do it only because he knows that people wouldn't buy it and that this, in turn, would hurt him. But I'd like to propose another explanation. I propose that Obama doesn't do it because he's principled enough to criticize visible performance and ideas and not to cast ugly and unproven aspersions on unseen motives.

As much as I don't want McCain to be our next president, I had a modicum of respect for him. But much of that is now gone. I suspect that if he were to know this, he wouldn't give a damn about me or my lack of respect for him. But if enough Americans lost respect for him over things like this and let him know it, he just might care enough to clean up his act, even if he did it only for the sake of expedience and not because it reflected a change in the quality of his underlying integrity or lack thereof.

I think a prominent reporter should put him on the spot and ask him about this statement.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Whoa! McCain's word were Rovian. Fortunately or unfortunately, there is no one other than pundits to police what political discourse is legit. We can only hope that voters are getting wise to hatemongering from the Right.

I think that you are right in your assessment of average McCain supporters [i.e., conservatives, generally]: They are Machiavellian, believing that one should do in politics whatever one can get away with. In otherwords, they practice "truthiness."

Likewise, I think you are right with respect to Obama and the expectations of his supporters: He is principled and truthful. Thus, again this year, the battle of truthiness v. truthfulness rages.

Anonymous said...

Well, don't leave us hanging. Exactly what did McCain say?

Steve said...

Sonny--
I can't tell you the exact words he used. It was one of those situations where I saw a snippet of one of his campaign speeches, and in that snippet, he said words to the effect of what I reported in my entry.

Tom--
I agree that McCain does not appear to be the man of principle he passes himself off as being, unless it's, as you suggest, the Machiavellian principle of using any means he thinks necessary to achieve the end of becoming president.

Anonymous said...

Most hateful ad ever?

Anonymous said...

I can't believe those evil neocons.