Original Mavericks
Marc Ambinder writes about John McCain’s latest ad:
You can sort of see, from this new McCain-Palin advertisement, why it’s so crucial for Barack Obama to link John McCain to the Republican Party. BTW: the ad claims that Palin “stopped the Bridge to Nowhere,” which is technically true but functionally false. No blowback, though: the electorate doesn’t seem to penalize campaigns for deliberately distorting the record of their candidate and their opponent. It’s probably an artifact of twenty years’ worth of campaign advertisements and has something to do with the way consumers process news.
But couldn’t it have something to do with the way the campaign press reports news? Back in 2000, the exit polls showed that among the 24 percent of the electorate who said it was very important to them to select an “honest and trustworthy” president, 80 percent voted for George W Bush. This, I assume, had something to do with the fact that the press repeatedly weaved through its coverage of Gore a narrative about Gore’s alleged difficulty telling the truth, even though most of the data points where Gore lied or “exaggerated” were actually made up by the press. McCain, by contrast, has not only been caught in several bald-faced lies, but in a few instances — this business with Palin and the bridge most notably — keeps on doing it in very high-profile contexts even though they’ve gotten called on it repeatedly. So where’s the narrative about how McCain’s key strategy introducing Sarah Palin to the public and turning his campaign around is based on putting lies at the heart of the presentation? There are a few dozen people, of whom Marc is one, in a position to create this narrative. They’ve chosen not to do so, but that’s a decision they’ve made not a fact about “the way consumers process news.”
83 Responses to “Original Mavericks”
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September 8th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Hence the no-comment policy.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:54 am
BTW: the ad claims that Palin “stopped the Bridge to Nowhere,” which is technically true but functionally false.
How is it technically true? Congress, for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with Palin at all, who was not even the Governor at the time, decided to kill the Bridge to Nowhere. Where is the technical truth in that?
September 8th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Does he read his email?
September 8th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Glad to see Matt coming around to the Ambinder-skeptic position.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Matt, it is clear that telling the truth will get you fired or silenced. That’s why McCain’s campaign is so bold about their lies and do not expect to be called on it to any extent that it will reach the public consciousness. There needs to be a pushback of all people of honesty that some level of truthtelling is necessary in this election. If not, honesty as a virtue will be well and truly gone in this country.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Democrats need to keep harping on this and other Palin lies. This will set up the meme that she is a liar so that lies she says in the future will be framed that way.
The primary question of the day seems to be, how should Obama and Democrats in general deal with Palin? Ignore her or attack her? I think she needs to be attacked.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
@brent: Congress removed the earmark for the bridge prior to her Governorship, but didn’t actually eliminate the funds themselves. As Governor, Palin still spent the money, but not on the bridge span itself (which remains unbuilt, though I believe she did still order the building of the approaches for the bridge). So, technically, she can claim she made the official decision.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
true but functionally false
Can you tweeter Mark and ask him what that means, or better yet inform him that it is simply false. And tell him he is responsible, he is part of the problem.
I imagine Marc receiving 100 WTF emails and laughing as he deletes each and every one.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Midwest Product,
The line from the speech she keeps giving around the country is “About the Bridge To Nowhere, I said to Congress ‘thanks, but no thanks.”
That is a flat out lie. And any post hoc rationalization can not make up for the fact that she never told Congress to pull that ear mark.
IT IS A LIE. And she refuses to stop saying it.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
What could be more mavericky than lying? Well, there’s cheating and stealing, but McCain will no doubt get to those, too.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
James Garner was the original Maverick.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Garner#Maverick
September 8th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Republicans don’t lie, ever. At most, they say things that are “functionally false,” but are true on some elemental (or perhaps spiritual) level. Democrats lie all the time, even when they’re telling the truth.
IOKIYAR. It’s not just for breakfast anymore.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Ah, but McCain “looks presidential” as he tells his lies, so he gets away with it. If the media could only get over the idea that this isn’t an audition for a role in a movie, there might be some improvement.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Of course she refuses to stop saying it. As Ambinder said, you don’t get punished for it. And, as Ambinder demonstrated, people who could punish you use weaselly lines like “technically true but functionally false” to keep their Republican buddies happy.
(Buddies at publications like, oh, I don’t know, The Atlantic Monthly?)
September 8th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I think the correct response is to put out the bridge safety reports for all the bridges in the US. that do need repairs, including the failed bridge in Minnesota, and ask why Alaska still has more federal pork per capita than any other state, and where is the $3000 a year from the oil companies for the rest of us.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Mathew - actual policies are so 20th century. Don’t you realize that we aren’t electing a president, rather a prom king and queen? In this analogy, the Pub queen is a good deal more attractive than the Dem queen. Unless there’s a serious game changer, the Pubs will win this one, and continue to fidle whilst Rome burns.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Forget Marc et al for a second. If Obama, in his opening comments of the debate, were to call out McCain on his most egregious lies (bridge, “obama hasn’t passed bipartisan/meaningful legislation”, taxes) how would this play? It would force the media to take notice and do some factchecking, no? Is it too risky to call McCaina a bold faced liar in front of 50 million viewers at a presidential debate? Could that really damage his image?
September 8th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
This is one of the things, I think, that drives the claims of “bias” and the Foxification of cable news. If the political media didn’t envision itself as the arbiter of a horse race between the two campaigns, in which anything that one side repeats enough to make a “narrative” suddenly becomes something that must be repeated, at best, with a question mark, there wouldn’t be any need for, say, MSNBC to run staunchly liberal pundits like Olbermann.
Instead, it seems a completely alien concept for the news, these days, that, when somebody lies, you talk about it as if it were an affront to the American people being lied to.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
As has been pointed out, it isn’t even functionally true. You can’t stop something that isn’t going.
And it’s useful to remember that a lie is a moral act not a “functional” one. She intends to deceive? She’s lying.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Is it technically true because she kept the money and spent it on other projects?
She knows the deal was dead before she was governor, right? And that she lobbied for it? And took a posture of high dudgeon that anyplace in Alaska might be considered “nowhere?”
The R’s can no longer distinguish between campaigning and governing. Truly.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Yes, but the important question is which candidate you wish to have a beer with, a question whose answer will be dictated to you by the brilliant punditocracy currently trying to tell us that John McCain used to be Jesus H. Moderate Maverick until somehow He fell from Grace a few years ago.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Mike in MI wrote,
I’ve wondered that myself. Problem I invision is that the press would come down on Obama like a ton of bricks, and then things would degenerate into a “you’re a liar/no, you’re a liar” standoff.
Not that I buy into the BS that negative campaigning isn’t effective.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
The R’s can no longer distinguish between campaigning and governing. The whole of the Republican tribe is about “WINNING” Consequences and subsequent failure are meaningless.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Calling out McCain would make the press fact-check everything, and as much as I want him to win, I’m sure Obama has stretched the truth on occasion.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
The R’s can no longer distinguish between campaigning and governing. The whole of the Republican tribe is about “WINNING” Consequences and subsequent failure are meaningless.
As are methods
September 8th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Congress removed the earmark for the bridge prior to her Governorship, but didn’t actually eliminate the funds themselves. As Governor, Palin still spent the money, but not on the bridge span itself (which remains unbuilt, though I believe she did still order the building of the approaches for the bridge). So, technically, she can claim she made the official decision.
I see what you are saying but that still isn’t quite right. As others have pointed out, her repeated claim is that she “told Congress thanks but no thanks.” That is not true “technically” or otherwise. However I could see your point that if she had merely been claiming “I decided against the bridge to nowhere” that could be charitably (very charitably) described as technically true but highly misleading. That sort of a statement, however, would not have the advantage of making her sound like a Government reformer.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
You give him too much credit - creating the memes is well below his pay grade. He’s just a shovel-man, a catapult, if you will.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
If she spent money on the approaches, how does that even vaguely equal “stopping” the bridge since it’s the opposite of stopping it. Simply having the word “bridge” in the sentence doesn’t make it “functionally” true. That isn’t how language works. She encouraged the bridge. She pined for the fjords of bridgeness. She wandered by the grave of the bridge with violets and sweet suffering sighs of regret, went to an Alaskan tree and carved thereon “SP + BTN” and then decorated the pairs of initials with a valentine heart.
She and McCain and the GOP are running their campaign with Goebbels Big Lie boldness.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
thank you, Mr. Yglesias, for pointing this out: there is a collective act of irresponsibility by the MSM going on: they CHOOSE not to point out lies, supposedly with the rationale that every campaign tells untruths, so what’s the difference between a small one and a whopper? WTF is going on in journalism programs nowadays, anyway?
September 8th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
What people need to realize is that Mcwars and company are running against the re-pukes as the Mcmaverick Party of Reformers and that`s how they can win by keepinf their distance from the shrub and obama and biden need to keep linking them to the re-pukes and their schemes.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
The press won’t carry Obama’s message. He has to run the ads saying that McCain and Palin are lying himself. He needs to do that now.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
A candidate for president is running away from his party’s base, while embracing it. The party is running away from its own president and his record. And together, the party is running against itself, promsing the clean up the mess it’s made. That all three propositions are true and the party still enjoys a 3 point lead in the national polls shows that something is seriously out of whack in American politics.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Mary @ 31 nailed it. Every four years we lament that the press won’t do its job, and every four years we lose. Obama has the money to get his message across without them. But five minutes of professorial hemming and hawing ain’t a message.
They need a commercial listing all the lies with the word LIE in huge type on each shot. “If they lie this shamelessly in the campaign, imagine what they’ll do in the White House!”
September 8th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
ABC finally doing their job in troopergate. Finally a MSM is doing their job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOBWZ7Jocc8
I think we should all write to ABC to praise them. Hopefully it will catch on.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
The press won’t carry Obama’s message. He has to run the ads saying that McCain and Palin are lying himself. He needs to do that now.
Yes. Absolutely. This must be done. None of this ‘all about issues’ stuff. The issue is one side is lying, and winning because of it.
There is no high road in not pointing out lies. The high road IS pointing out the lie.
Sadly, I don’t see this happening.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
The simplest explanation about the reluctance of people like Ambinder to call McCain a habitual liar is the stubborn belief that he’s really a nice guy. no matter how many stories surface about McCain’s volatile temper, corrupt associations, willingness to repeatedly lie about his opponent’s record the media continues to treat McCain like their lovable granddad who sometimes says off color things but deep down he really doesn’t mean what he says. I predict that when Obama and Biden start calling their ads lies (like Bill Burton did about the “Original Maverick” ad today) the corporate media will immediately attack them for daring to impugn McCain’s integrity in such a way. They refuse to wake up from the myth of the Maverick.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
There is no high road in not pointing out lies. The high road IS pointing out the lie.
It’s a cliche sometimes for us to complain about the voters we have to deal with who vote for and re-elect Bush. But we really have to look at the plank in our own eyes: why is the Democratic party full of voters who keep voting for milquetoasts as their candidates? Fewer “high minded campaigns” more outright viciousness. And if our own Democrats don’t want to do this, maybe we need to find new Democrats.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Ok. Imagine for a moment that McCain’s only rational reason for choosing Sara Palin as VP is because she is his SOUL MATE PORK BUSTING CRUSADER, just like McCain.
Consider that if that was stripped away, how will McCain answer the following question: “Now that its clear, that Governor Palin was not a Pork Buster as you’ve claimed, but instead her state is one of the biggest Pork consumers in the country, why did you choose her as your VP?.”
There is no answer to this question. Um… Foreign Policy… Oops no… Um… The economy… Ummm… Errrr… Moose Burgers. FACK. Ok she’s a HOT evangelical superstar CHICK and she was the only way to throw a losing campaign into chaos. Alls we need to do is hide her from the press for 2 months. We can do that…
With those thoughts in mind, do you know any investigative reporters that can answer the following question? How does Palin’s Alaskan Pork during 1.5 years as Governor compare to 1.5 years of pork in states like, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Florida, and other swing states.
The reason I ask, is I see some reporting, that could become some very compelling campaign advertisements.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
How often did McCain vote with Cheney when they were in the Senate together? I bet he’d look a lot less like a maverick if someone could figure that out.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
So does the Obama team listen to this? Will they pick up and run with the ads that state ‘LIAR’ and list it all - are they waiting for the otherside to goof *and the MSM to notice*
screwing up on the economy isn’t enough. The great voting public, bless their ‘Survivor’ mentality, doesn’t understand the economy either and here’s their prom queen all ready to win.
honestly, people get the government they deserve but *surely* there are enough people who understand that this isn’t a good thing?
September 8th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I agree. The media referees are so cowed that they will not call the McCain campaign on their lies. Obama needs to take the most egregious lies, such as “I opposed earmarks” (while actually accepting the highest per capita pork in the nation) and run ads with McCain/Palin saying this while a giant LIAR is stamped across their face. Force their dishonesty to become an issue, it’s the only way.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
“My wife would leave me if I played a Republican.” — James Garner, TV’s Maverick
I know he doesn’t own the term “maverick,” but still, I wish he’d do an ad or two, this election season.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
If the media doesn’t care, maybe it’s time we start stretching the truth.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
If Obama refuses to call McCain/Palin liars, then why should the MSM? Obama thinks that it’s the media’s job to attack McCain.
As many people have said, their lies need to be bluntly called out in a commercial. Unfortunately, the Obama refuses to do that. They can’t seem to figure out that running attack ads gets the MSM talking. McCain runs ad calling Obama a celebrity. The MSM goes nuts asking, is Obama a celebrity? McCain runs an ad implying that Obama is the anti-Christ, and in turn the MSM starts asking, is Obama the anti-Christ?
Obama needs to take the lead.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
If I were a strategist, I would spend all of my free time studying the voting habits of American Idol viewers. It’s clear that a huge portion of our electorate puts about as much thought into voting for president as they do to Jordin Sparks.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
There is no honor in lying.
That should be the theme of a new series of ads. That should be the talking point. Straight at the old geezer who talks about honor but refuses to define it, and lies, lies, lies.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
How about the fact that Alaska has so much pork per capita that the generous governor decided to refund our tax dollars to her citizens.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
A 30 second spot with Bill Clinton.
“I know something about fibbing to the public. Well, the Republican ticket makes me look like George Washington.”
Cite McPalin lies for the rest of the spot.
I’m not trolling. I think it could really work!
September 8th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Republican Update on Lincoln:
You can fool some of the people all of the time.
You can fool all of the people some of the time.
You may not be able to fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool the majority of the people at election time.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
That McCain whopper about how Bagdhad was as safe as Anytown, USA lie ought to be highlighted. There, he was playing with people’s lives, the lives of the country’s young men and women. It was a sickening LIE and if exposed properly in an ad will hurt the old cocksucker where he lives.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Don’t use the L word — instead talk about “trust”. As in,
“Sarah Palin said she turned down the bridge to nowhere, but she wasn’t even governor when Congress made that decision. And she took the money anyhow, and even spent it on other pork.”
and
“Senator McCain… Candidate McCain… . If you vote for him, who do you get?”
and
“Phil Gramm, is he an advisor, or not? He says something embarrassing, he’s ‘off the team’, yet here is again, risen from the dead. Are we a bunch of whiners after all?”
Pound on the “trust” issue; don’t call it lies.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I agree with several writers above: The way to make lying the issue isn’t to nudge the media and wait for them to cover it, but to directly make lying the issue. Attack them as liars directly enough, and it will be news. This can be prepared for and dialed up with caution, yet developed into a killer hit on McCain’s credibility and fitness to govern.
A sequence that seems to make sense:
(1) Spokesmen hammer a set of clear-cut lies (like the bridge lie and the tax-raising lie). At first, avoid responding to against lies about Obama himself: make this an offensive move. Use the L word until it’s familiar and not a shock in itself. Express a cold outrage at their lying to America. Blogs can help with research and provide supporting fire.
(2) An Obama speech on right, wrong, America, and honesty, reminding the American people of what is decent and why, in their personal lives, they reject liars. Building on on the now-familiar examples of McCain-ticket lies, draw the broader picture of a campaign based on systematic lying — a risky and desperate tactic that is now failing. Remind people of all the reasons why liars are unfit to govern.
(3) Stand rock solid. Use the hard-edged facts to anchor the picture of the broader pattern. Repeat that after all this, no one can trust anything they say, and that that’s the price they pay for their tactics. Keep the charge at the level of outright unfitness to govern. Tone: stern and disappointed; coldly outraged but not _angry._ Don’t attack the media. When they go soft, treat them as understandably (but alas, wrongly) timid and soft-hearted.
(4) Let surrogates build on this picture to counterattack the lies about Obama himself.
They will, of course, make counter-charges of lying. One response would be to demand that they point to even one example of an alleged Obama-campaign lie that is remotely comparable (in evidence and significance-if-true) to any of the top three lies by the McCain ticket. Hammer the fact that proven liars will lie about lying, too.
A protection against counter-charges is to link Obama’s truth-telling to his message of hope, of a renewal of a more decent politics. Say that Obama has gladly paid the short-term price of not lying, and that this is not a weakness: It is a necessary source of strength, another reason why he, but not McCain, is fit to be President of the United States.
—–
If they get a free pass on lying, then the world is whatever they say, and in that world, they win. Establish that they are systematic liars, then their scandals stick to them, McCain’s “honor” collapses, and they lose. Is there an alternative to making their systematic lying become a central campaign issue?
September 8th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Because they can, and because the MSM is owned by corporations that support McCain. The MSM will tout McCain as the saviour of america(he was a POW, so anything he says must be good and right) Obama will continue to be portrayed as the overeducated-after all, god forbid that we actually make someone more intelligent than the average american president-elite(and why shouldn’t a child of mixed race raised by a single mother-but raised in Hawaii!!-be called elite)and to get around the repiglicians calling him what they really want to-an uppity…..-they will continue to call him a secret muslim-believed by 12% of the sheeple-a black power radical christian-believed by that same 12% that thinks he is muslim, that there will be race riots(why would their be race riots?) that he will raise taxes on everyone one so that he can give all the AA’s reparations of thousands of dollars, that Obama is not to be trusted because he is after all, a young black male. [Lock up all yours wimmin, the blacks is out ta get em] All of the Authoritaritan followers(they come in 2 flavors, leaders and followers) totally believe whatever the leaders tell them, no matter how blatant the lie. They(the neocon oligarchs who consist of Big Energy, Big Arms, Big Media and Big Jesus) control the MSM. They control what you see and read. Kind of like that 60’s program “The Outer Limits” but this time its all true.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Can a people sue public airways and print for knowingly lying? A class action, even if just to frame the disinformation debate. It’s not just the ads that lie. It’s the commentators.
September 8th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I don’t even know how this can still be said. I mean, the “Bridge to Nowhere” may not have been built, but didn’t Alaska still get the hundreds of millions of dollars which was gonna be used to build it?
It’s just that, instead of the bridge, the Alaskan government got to use the money on whatever the fuck they wanted to. What did they spend it on?
September 8th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Bring that Howler magic!
Your next assignemnt: name names!
September 8th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Problem is; no one gives a shit about this lie. That’s what makes it so perfect for them. Wingers I know say “so what? A Dummycrap would’a tax and spent for *10* bridges to nowhere like they always do, and besides, har har har, total fucking babe Sarah took the money and ran (starts humming Steve Miller Band…)”. It’s unbelievable but true, and how do you fight someone who’s literally laughing as Palin steals from them? How do you fight people who think “har har har the GOP is destroying the entire tax and spend ‘Dummycrap’ gummint. As soon as they are broke, my taxes will go down and everything will be great!”. It’s literally like arguing with a brick wall. They literally believe that only Democrats tax them and only the GOP cuts taxes. They also don’t want to pay for anything for anyone else. Total Spite and seething rage perfectly directed at the wrong people.
September 8th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Simple, they need to label him “Dishonest John” every time he comes out with one of these whoppers. Tie the can to his tail.
September 8th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Since it is axiomatic that all politicians lie, what do you gain from calling the other guy (or gal) a liar?
Ted Frier said it best but that’s half of the story:
“A candidate for president is running away from his party’s base, while embracing it. The party is running away from its own president and his record. And together, the party is running against itself, promsing the clean up the mess it’s made. That all three propositions are true and the party still enjoys a 3 point lead in the national polls shows that something is seriously out of whack in American politics.”
The party enjoys a lead because we have failed to give older folks who’ve given up on idealism a reason to avoid Gramps and Louise like a wet toilet seat. Change, change, change. That’s the last thing a man over 50 wants to hear as his hair disappears and his back aches. Change is anything but good.
Barack will crush Gramps when he realizes that competence and not dreams are the product of his fine mind. Intelligence, foresight, pragmatism, determination and steadyness.
I’ll go further, it’s not racism that won’t close it for Obama, it’s the fact that his personality works against his message. He is not about change, he is steady. He is competent. He is smart. Like a pilot. No panick, no drama, touchdown.
Change is drama. Obama is NO DRAMA. His passionate speeches show his talent but they don’t show his personality. This makes people wonder if he’s real, if he wrote them. How can he show so much passion in one instance while taking it like a stoic the next? Makes him look like a phoney.
Read The Brothers Karamazov. Barack is Ivan. Once he realizes he’s Ivan, games over.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
A picture is worth a thousand. Why not an Obama TV spot showing the approach roadways to the bridge to nowhere (with earth moving equipment in action–I’m sure video footage of this exists), while a narrator intones…”Sarah Palin said Thanks but no thanks to the Bridge to Nowhere…Really? Then why did she spend all of those earmarked dollars on these roads leading to a bridge she claims she refused?”…. Sarah Palin is no reformer. She can’t tell the truth either”
So, people actually see the earmarks leading nowhere (millions of wasted dollars) and Palin’s honesty is directly challenged, without using the word liar…
September 8th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Ambinder’s a fantastic reporter and he clearly has high-level McCain campaign sources and RNC operatives who trust him.
Unfortunately, it’s tainted his reporting. It’s the classic reporter’s conundrum: openly calling McCain a liar, though its truthful, will kill his access. And so he can’t call a spade a spade.
Ambinder could argue that he provides a valuable service, funneling information from insiders, and that the role of telling the truth is best left to others with less to lose than he has. But the reality is that each of us, each individual citizen, has an obligation to tell the truth as we see it; what Ambinder doesn’t see is that the inability of the press to be truthful is a collective action problem, with every holdout from the truth supporting every other, and each undermining American political journalism in a dreadful way.
He’s part of the problem.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Can someone explain the polls to me? Of the 28 states that register voters by party affiliation, Democrats have added 3 million new voters and the GOP has lost over 300k. So how are the polls showing a McCain lead possible? Can there be that many independents going for McSame?
September 8th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Too true, ethan salto.
The conundrum that the general populace face, though, for the most part, they’re blissfully unaware, is that their well-paid scribes absolutely must maintain their sources. Thus, the mush-mouthed Ambinder piece, and related drivel.
It behooves the people working our side to be aware that the scribes will not tell any story, unless our side’s newsmakers insist on presenting it themselves. And it won’t be told unless our side’s newsmakers manage to maintain a warm relationship with these press-itutes.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Shorter, less polite 61: the McCain camp cut off Ambinder’s balls, and Palin is wearing them as earrings.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
A picture is worth a thousand. Why not an Obama TV spot showing the approach roadways to the bridge to nowhere (with earth moving equipment in action–I’m sure video footage of this exists), while a narrator intones…”Sarah Palin said Thanks but no thanks to the Bridge to Nowhere…Really? Then why did she spend all of those earmarked dollars on these roads leading to a bridge she claims she refused?”…. Sarah Palin is no reformer. She can’t tell the truth either”
I like “She was in favor of the Bridge to Nowhere until she wanted to get somewhere else.”
September 8th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
So Ambinder responded and of course, misses the point of your post. I’m sorry, the media fawning over Palin and how she’s a “gamechanger,” with one or two mild references to the fact that she supported the bridge to nowhere, does not constitute properly doing their job. “technically true but functionally false” is a perfect example of the weaselly “balanced” double talk that Marc and his fellow punditz engage in all the time. Let’s just call a lie a lie. Why is that not possible?
September 8th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Please go read Ambinder’s flaccid response.
First he misstates the basic facts:
No Marc, she opposed it after it was turned down by Congress, she had no say so in the matter, it was a done deal.
Next he says..
Exagerration? The word is lie.
I watched Gibson and Schafer interview McCain and the subject was never mentioned, how does that happen?
McCain is shown at rally’s stating this lie and NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS do not point out the lie.
I watched a week of 24/7 crazy preacher coverage, it made front page news, it was the top story on all major newscast.
The preacher was not running for office, the preacher would never decide if men would go to war. The preacher had no say on the future of the supreme court, energy policy, social security or economic policy. But his words were so inflammatory that the nearly derailed Obama’s candidacy.
But now two Republican candidates state balded face lies to a nation, every journalist knows that they are lying and this fact can not gather the attention of one headline, it’s not the main story on any major news program. It’s not even a topic when the candidate is interviewed by two “respected” journalist.
Ambinder ends his article with a shrug.
Disgusting.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
IDEA FOR ACTION: Campaign for Truth - against unethical media practices who refuse to champion the truth:
An email addressed to all major media, signed on-line by supporters, hopefully millions will sign, demanding that campaign untruths be reported with vigor.
A honest journalist would be truly angry for being used to disseminate lies to the public. Also all ads by candidates that lie or are truthy need to be widely reported in the press with a tone that informs the people that truth matters when it comes to electing our next President, Vice President, Senator, or Representative.
After the media fails to heed the letter which I suspect they will; another email must follow after each and every lie not reported by the media. Keep sending more and more emails signed by thousands and thousands of people demanding ethical honest reporting of the truth. Links could be set up in blog sites to “go sign the latest email demanding the truth”. As so many untruths are let stand today in the press, I am sure there will be multiple letters to sign at a given time.
Bombard them. This is truly a bi-partisian issue. It effects everyone and our county’s future. Notifications to the media must be ongoing for every lie not debunked by the media. Create channels to share the emails with multiple organizations across the nation. Get people to rise up with one voice to the media, “We’re not going to take it anymore!”.
We are watching the media being complicit with one campaign. The only thing that can help is to be relentless until this “community action it self” becomes the story in the press.
It is only when the demand for honesty of the press is actually widely reported on TV will the low information voters become energized to join in the Campaign for Truth.
This could be taken up by MoveOn, Labor Unions, Community Organizers across the nation, Blogs, Churches, and any number of groups who share the interest in the media reporting truth over lies.
Letters to editors of papers, notices on various bill boards on line and off. Ads paid for in papers to make sure the text of the Campaign for Truth can be widely seen.
Make it a movement that inspires all to move at lighting speed as we all know now the importance of “the fierce urgency of now”.
Truth must be reported NOW not later. Once Barack Obama is President he can initiate FCC regulations that require campaigns tell the truth about an opponents record. Huge fines and a requirement that they themselves have to come forward in the press to correct their assertions would be where I would start.
If the leaders in the blogosphere and other organizations wrote “the letter” the demand for truth letter to be widely dispersed so that key phrases would be used in every complaint sent to a media outlet, it would increase the chances of the Campaign for Truth being reported on TV widely enough to make the stink that is needed. It is long past due for the people to rise up together with a loud and persistant call on this crucial issue.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
“But we really have to look at the plank in our own eyes: why is the Democratic party full of voters who keep voting for milquetoasts as their candidates? Fewer “high minded campaigns” more outright viciousness.”
Because it doesn’t work for the Dems. “Do exactly what the other side did to win” doesn’t work because you’re going after different voters, based on different reasons. Conservatives really have that resentment thing going for them. Liberals don’t and so they can’t run the same plays. Fortunately people running major Dem campaigns understand that a good strategy is not the same thing as a strategy which makes angry middle-aged male Kos readers feel good.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
you’re going after different voters, based on different reasons. Conservatives really have that resentment thing going for them.
If there are fewer of us than there are of them, then that’s a formula for losing 100% of the time.
Fortunately people running major Dem campaigns understand that a good strategy…
You’d think that a good strategy is one that wins. If the good strategists are the ones responsible for, basically, the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections, we’re kind of screwed. Remember, in 2004, the word came from those “people running major Dem campaigns” that the Democratic Convention was not supposed to have any attacks on Bush. Voters wouldn’t like that, we were told. Nice job!
September 8th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Governor Palin herself, in her own press release, stated on the record that the bridge was canceled because the earmark was just too small: “[I]t’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island”
See , reproduced in full below:
September 8th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Gore’s mistake was that he didn’t turn on the media when confronted with the “lies” but rather tried to be reasonable and explain his position. You don’t see that with Bush; you don’t see McCain doing it now. No, they just say black is white and they turn any media report of the lie into evidence that the media has a liberal bias; and the lie itself—why everyone knows that politicians are not always full with the truth.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Palin campaigned for the bridge. Then congress removed the earmark (meaning the money didn’t HAVE to be spent on the bridge), and didn’t give enough money to meet the spiraling cost of construction on it… So Palin spent the money elsewhere (including building the road that leads up to where the bridge was supposed to be built - quite literally a road to nowhere)
So she didn’t say “thanks, but no thanks.” She said “drat you, you didn’t give enough!”. That’s a big enough difference that it’s officially a lie, and not just a distortion.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
I looked up “maverick” in the Oxford English Dictionary.
“Maverick” has come to mean this: “Anything dishonestly obtained, as a saddle, a mine or a piece of land. Hence as a verb to mean “to take possession of something without any legal claim.”
McCain and Palin both.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
The problem really is that the Republicans, in the face of media “scrutiny,” don’t back down, they don’t admit that they “misspoke,” etc. In essence, they don’t let it continue to be front page news- which is what the democrats seem to be so tragically good at. I think as democrats, we need to go ahead and push our ethics aside for a campaign and play the Republican’s game.
September 25th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
According to the Conservative Beacon on July 28, 2008, 13 Republican Senators voted against the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac “socialist bailout.” Are these Republicans now going to vote for the much larger Wall Street bailout or just let Democrats walk the plank?
The Conservative Beacon said, “These 13 Senators should be applauded for voting against the socialist bailout of Fannie and Freddie.”
1. John Barrasso (R-WY)
2. Tom Coburn (R-OK)
3. Bob Corker (R-TN)
4. John Cornyn (R-TX)
5. Jim DeMint (R-SC)
6. John Ensign (R-NV)
7. Michael Enzi (R-WY)
8. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
9. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
10. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)
11. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
12. John Thune (R-SD)
13. David Vitter (R-LA)
The Conservative Beacon added: “There were some notable Senators who did not vote including Jim Bunning (R-KY), “The Messiah” a.k.a. Barack Hussein Obama (D-IL) (he was too busy proclaiming his World citizenship) and John McCain (R-AZ).”
Does this sound like bipartisanship?
On September 23, 2008, Senator Bunning issued a statement calling the Paulson bailout plan “financial socialism” and “un-American.”
Today, on MSNBC, Senator DeMint said “government caused the problem” in the housing and financial markets and he wanted a “free market solution.”
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