Justus For All

Dave,
I agree that the faux outrage is boring, but I don’t agree it’s been balanced by any means. But let’s move past that, since it’s mostly anecdotal and is certainly colored by partisan leanings (yours and mine).

I agree about your “tribal” comments, but what has disappointed me is that the media, who is supposed to act as the great mediator, has devolved to sensationalist entertainment. It’s not liberal, it’s just lazy and unprofessional.

I definitely do NOT agree with your symbolism argument, at least not THAT symbolism. There was of course symbolism, but you misunderstood it. Palin is the lipstick (duh) and also the paper with the word’s “change” and McCain is the ugly pig and the old fish. That’s really obvious, considering that it wasn’t until they brought Palin on to the ticket that they adopted this theme of “change”.

But what has really let me down in all of this is how far down the sewer politics have gone. And this isn’t something I will try to find fake balance on. I really do believe that the McCain campaign is the one who is dragging it down, and the media is the one to blame for not calling it out.

And this isn’t anecdotal evidence. Read the last week from FactCheck.org. The number of falsehoods by Obama vs McCain, quantitatively, weighs heavily in McCain’s favor:

Obama misleading statements:

http://wire.factcheck.org/2008/09/09/obama-make-an-iraqi-accounting-oversight/

http://wire.factcheck.org/2008/09/09/health-care-hyperbole/

McCain’s misleading statements:

http://wire.factcheck.org/2008/09/10/pesky-proper-nouns/

http://wire.factcheck.org/2008/09/10/pigs-and-pit-bulls/

http://wire.factcheck.org/2008/09/09/original-mavericks-old-bunk/

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/off_base_on_sex_ed.html

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/mccain-palin_distorts_our_finding.html

But worse than the pure numbers is the qualitative analysis of them. Obama’s team is doing what is admittedly a shameful practice of seizing statements/concepts/ideas from the other side and dropping the full context that might have been provided paragraphs/minutes/days before.

But McCain’s team is seizing not only dropping the proper context, but they are actually doing things that imply the opposite. I really don’t recall seeing such ugly and dishonest ads in the previous two elections.

The quoting of FactCheck in one of their ads was plainly wrong and FactCheck had to call them out on it.

The claim that Obama wanted to teach kindergartners about sex is just so absurd when you find out that Obama was trying to do the opposite. They cast him as a *pervert* in spite of the fact that he was working on bills to protect children.

They cry that Obama is trying to “reduce future combat systems” even when McCain will _cut_ Future Combat Systems.

And what finally prompted me to come to the conclusion that McCain has lost any essence of his previous self was in this lipstick commercial. If you haven’t seen the ad (McCain’s team removed it from his own site), it’s here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U32G5_bqFvA

Even ignoring our disagreement about the symbolism specifics, the inclusion of Katie Couric was just so ridiculous and disgusting.

So yes, they both do some level of manipulation, but I’m not going to try to create balance when there is none. All evidence I can find shows that McCain’s campaign has dragged our country to a new low in politics and I’m really worried we’ll never recover from it.

I had a nice long comment with links to a bunch of sources at FactCheck,org, but it never went through. Perhaps caught by your spam engine due to too many links?

Your comment has been rescued from the spam filter.

I’ve now read your comment and all your links Patrick, and I have to say I don’t find it convincing. Other’s mileage may vary of course, but I just see politics being practiced from both sides.

I also find the ‘fact checks’ facts on the Bridge to No Where’ being incomplete and distorting in and of themselves. And of course, I disagree somewhat with their analysis of the ‘lipstick’ comment. In particular though, you can’t factually ‘prove’ whether Obama intended the lipstick comment to be a disguised swipe at Palin or not.

“All evidence I can find shows that McCain’s campaign has dragged our country to a new low in politics and I’m really worried we’ll never recover from it.”

Seems like every four years I hear pretty much the exact same thing from people. Frankly, it isn’t lower then things have been in the past, and it isn’t something that we will have any difficulty ‘recovering’ from.

I don’t know how familiar you are with the early days of pamphleteering elections, before the supposed descent into mud caused by (take your pick) Radio, TV, or the Internet, but there was a whole lot worse stuff being put out by campaigns then.

I respect you, but in this case it seems to me like you have a case of the vapors. Man up.

I am pretty familiar with previous political campaigns in the modern era (1900s+), but not so much before that. There has been nasty stuff thrown for a long time, but up until this year it generally not came directly from the horse’s mouth. Instead, it was redirected, whispered, or sent through a PAC. But this year the presidential brand is stamped on these ads.

People don’t seem to even be afraid of the repercussions anymore. There is no hidden robocalling campaign or PAC that is representing the worst in the election. Those things are still happening, but the nastiest mud is now stamped with “I’m XYZ and I approve this message”. That *is* very different than 2000 and 2004. That’s why I believe it’s a new low.

If you really think he was hinting that Palin was a pig vs. hinting that McCain was, then perhaps it’s time you “man up” yourself and look in the mirror, take out all the partisan characters and just look at the circumstances: old, long-time senate veteran running picks political newcomer and adopts “change” theme; opposite accuses recent “change” rhetoric of putting on lipstick. We don’t need to debate it further if you don’t see it, since I have nothing more to add myself.

At the end of the day, you’re still creating a false sense of balance here. I’d love for you to show me an Obama commercial that is even half as sleazy as some of the recent ones put out by McCain. Please, educate me, I really want to know. I think your recent post about the bridge is valid, but this ad is the worst I could find:

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/09/figures-obama-attacks-palin-on-bridge.html

I’ve done my best to take off my partisan goggles and I still walk away seeing a lot more slime coming from McCain. You don’t have to do the research and try to prove me wrong, but I’d certainly appreciate it if you gave it an effort instead of just saying you don’t find my arguments “convincing”.

I guess, first of all I don’t find it ‘worse’ that candidates are making these charges, unfounded or only partially true or exaggerated themselves rather then having it be some second or third party source done with a wink and a nod. In fact, I find that better.

Beyond that though, I don’t find “He said my running mate was a pig” to be the evilist thing ever, even if it was completely untrue. I also don’t find making a clever play with words, ‘lipstick on a pig’ that can fairly transparently was a reference to a female running mate to be the worst thing ever either. Both of these acts were political games, not a lot of substance and not really terribly important. I just can’t see them as being any part of a descent in sleaziness beyond anything ever seen before and a sign of the end times.

I honestly don’t spend a lot of time watching political adds. I almost never watch television and I certainly don’t spend my time perusing youtube for the candidates adds. I generally become aware of them if, and only if, they cause some sort of controversy.

I’m sorry if you think I am creating a ‘false sense of equivalence’ when one doesn’t exist. As I stated, the poltical back and forth gotcha doesn’t usually interest me enough to comment on and I only did because you asked what I thought. Obviously it is a subject that concerns you a lot, and equally obviously it doesn’t me. Frankly, as I said, the whole “He is so mean” seems pathetic when either camp engages in it.

I tried to explain why I didn’t find your arguments convincing. I don’t think the number of fact check entries has a whole lot of meaning and I just don’t see the difference in severity that is so plain to you.

I will agree that the McCain campaign has been more active then the Obama campaign in making attacks, but I don’t see that as being very related to the ‘virtue’ of the two campaigns. My impression is that the Obama campaign hasn’t needed to make the attacks directly because so much of the media is willing to make them for it. Everything from Palin’s decision to fly back to Alaska to have her last baby, to her pregnant daughter, to false reports about her position on birth control to creatively editing quotes from her about gods plan for the Iraq war has been thrown at her by the press. With that going on, I would hardly expect the Obama campaign to feel the need to make attacks (at least until today, when apparently they are taking off the gloves, again.) You make attacks in the hopes that they will get on the front pages of the papers, if the papers are doing you dirty work for you you don’t have to do it yourself.

Indeed, if I were inclined to worry about the future of America, I would find that so much of the press obviously campaigning for one candidate to be far more troublesome then McCain doing some distorting. Once again, I suppose that is a judgment call.

You’ll note though that I haven’t really blogged about that either. Partially that is because I think McCain and Palin can handle it, and partially I’ll admit because all of that press boosting hasn’t been that effective. I suspect that is due to the fact that the Media is really the only American institution that can rival Congress for unpopularity.

If you want though a few things from the Obama campaign itself that I think were cheap shots, there was the initial response to McCain’s pick as VP, totally denigrating Palin’s experience (which backfired, but was also weak) their response to her speech “She didn’t write it herself” (really weak and I think tinged with sexism) and Obama’s recent comparison of his responsibilities as running a presidential campaign (X millions of dollars a month, Y number of staff) to her job as a mayor, rather then her job as a Governor which is of course what she was most recently doing. That was incredibly sad in my opinion, and I also think the whole “I’m qualified to be President because I have been campaigning to be President” is about as lame a thing as I have ever seen trotted out.

I don’t have a sleaze-o-meter though. Obviously I’m not highly attuned to it in the first place and secondarily I don’t think we are very able to remove our biases from that. I don’t think I can do that. I also don’t think you can do it. Obviously, you like Obama. There are certainly things to like about him. I prefer McCain.

I will only say, as a final point that I have now been seeing Obama supporters complain about how mean and unfair their guy’s opponents are for months now, first with Hillary, and now with McCain.

Some good points in there that I’ll try to digest in a bit (need to get heads down on some work :P), but one quick comment:

It’s good you don’t watch much TV (I have bunny ears myself), but unfortunately most of our voters do, and they are influenced heavily by the ads. That’s why I care so much about them and less about what campaign aids say that gets reported day-to-day in newspapers, since those don’t have nearly the impact as prime time TV does.

I think that even fairly uniformed voters are pretty savvy about commercials and aren’t all that influenced by them, particularly the tit-for-tat ones like this. I highly doubt that the lipstick on a pig gaffe or the following commercials will have any sort of effect on voters. I honestly think that more ‘issue’ adds have a bigger effect.