When Honor Dies

I meant to post a "maverickiness" post when the McCain campaign hired Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina political operative who was responsible for those sickening lies about McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 primary campaign. (The whisper rumor was that McCain had an illegitimate black daughter, which he didn't, but it worked to a degree because he has an adopted daughter from Bangladesh. The veiled reference was aimed at lowest common denominators: bigots. And it isn't just a southern thing, take a look at a respectable young Republican leader from my home state. A little home grown racism warms the heart, especially when claims that he had no idea that what he wrote was racists. And to echo McCainabout Eskew in 2000, "There is a special place in hell" for people like him.) I was hoping that the McCain's duty and honor would be enough to provide a bulwark from the bottom of barrel politicking that Steven Schmidt and Eskew have proven capable in the past. I was proven wrong tonight, and am now some where between hurt, angry, and disappoint in McCain.

The first volley was Obama's ad on education essentially locking McCain into the typical republican line on education and tying his policy to Bush's. Respectful pictures and stayed on the facts about McCain's record with little to no distortions. An issue ad, pure and simple.

McCain's response is beyond a low blow about and has the racial overtones of the Willie Horton ad from 1988. It completely distorts a law Obama supported – he didn't author or even sponsor it – in committee sex education law while in the Illinois legislature, and this exact attack was used by Alan Keyes in the 2004 Senate campaign. It was debunked at the time, but yet the McCain campaign brings it back covered in everything that is unholy with current political attack ads.

For Obama this should signal that McCain doesn't care about issues other than the most base cultural issues, and even won't have a respectful debate about those. The current ad is a Republican campaign ad trifecta in that regard: sex, race, and out-right distortion. The truth is the truth, and if the McCain campaign is going to feed the public lies, Obama has the choice of staying above the fray or making this campaign really ugly.

I could not sum up McCain's ad or the state of the McCain any better than the Obama campaign did this evening in their response to the new ad:

“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why,” says Obama spokesman Bill Burton in an emailed statement."

I personally have a couple of questions for McCain: Has winning become so important that you will do it at any cost? Is a scorched earth policy the best way to unite the country? Is this the type of change we can believe in?

Media: The ball is in your court, though I am sure you will let me down again. Remember you can remain unbiased by calling someone on a lie.


_John

*I am not linking to the ads and giving either campaign free ad space, they are easy enough to find.

image: "The Eternal Flame" from flickr starfish235