Joe Conason: Wanting the White House in the worst way

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/08/01/rove_mccain/

Wanting the White House in the worst way

The pundits who adore John McCain wonder why he has adopted campaign tactics he once despised, but his compromise with the smear merchants began a long time ago.

By Joe Conason

snip//


The slurs aimed at McCain during the South Carolina and New York primaries were appalling -- even in an era of scoundrel politics -- and nobody doubted that they should be attributed, at least indirectly, to Rove. The whispering campaign included anonymous leaflets and phone calls about the former drug dependency of Cindy McCain and the alleged illegitimacy of the McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter, Bridget. Then an independent committee tied closely to Rove and Bush mounted a TV campaign in New York accusing McCain of cutting breast cancer research funding, even though his sister was a survivor of the disease.

It must have been hard for Cindy and Bridget McCain to watch the maverick reformer throw his arms awkwardly around President Bush during the 2004 convention. It must have been hard for McCain to make the TV ad featuring that embrace, with a script approved by Rove. It must have been even harder for him to watch the Swift-boating of his old friend John Kerry, a fellow Navy veteran whose volunteer service he respected, even though they disagreed vehemently about the Vietnam War and many other issues.

By the time McCain spoke up feebly against the Swift boat campaign, the damage had been done -- to him as well as to Kerry. He had undergone a public transformation into a willing instrument of lesser men who trampled on his character and his honor, even his patriotism, just as his campaign is now seeking to do to Obama.

"They know no depths," he had complained wearily to reporters on his "Straight Talk" bus during the 2000 primaries. Now he has once more sold himself to those same forces, hoping that they will at last usher him into the White House. In his concession speech after the South Carolina primary, he said, "I want the presidency in the best way, not the worst way."

That is what has changed.

[Hope And Change]

1. K & R!

[depakid]

2. Bottom line: Republicans are realists- and most Democrats are idealists

when it comes to political campaigning.

They'll say or do anything that works, while Democrats plod along the ephemeral high road, hoping that the electorate has "changed" and will finally credit them for being the nice guys.

If not for Ross Perot breaking the pattern in 1992, the US probably wouldn't have had a Democrat in the Whitehouse since Jimmy Carter.

[babylonsister]

3. Realists or lying blowhards? Haven't we had enough of that? nt

[depakid]

4. Things are what they are

Yep- they're lying blowhards- but if they're not called out forcefully and in no uncertain terms, they'll prevail.

There's no excuse about not having enough money to do so this go round.