The Ultimate Test of the Media

McCain and Palin are doing something interesting. They've apparently decided that if the media covers only controversy and that the media will not call people on lies, but dutifully report "both sides," then they're going to just lie and see what happens. They get to not only frame the debate, but take ideal positions having nothing to do with reality.

Ezra Klein wrote brilliantly about this:

The McCain campaign's decision to lie about, well, everything, really needs to be understood as more than the outcome of John McCain's consuming ambition. It is a rational and obvious response to the rules laid down by the media. Indeed, McCain's spokesperson Brian Rogers says this directly to The Politico's Jonathan Martin. "We ran a different kind of campaign and nobody cared about us. They didn’t cover John McCain. So now you’ve got to be forward-leaning in everything."

And it's true. Earlier this year McCain made poverty tours and offered policy speeches. No one cared, Obama retained his lead. It was only when he began offering vicious attacks and daily controversies that he began setting the pace of the coverage. The McCain campaign learned something important about the media: It's an institution that covers conflict. If you want to direct its coverage, give it more conflict than your opponent. And so they have.

None of this, of course, absolves McCain of what he has done. He has sacrificed his honor and dignity with astonishing enthusiasm. He has become much worse than "just another politician." He is a politician who was once more than that, and used that reputation to go lower than the rest. But the fact remains that he wouldn't be doing this, that no one would do this, if the media ignored or censured the behavior. If lies were covered as lies and an allergy to substance was treated as evidence of an unfitness to govern, the tenor of campaigns would lift. These are, at the end of the day, rational beasts, and they hunger for good coverage. The McCain campaign has found its best coverage comes from its worst campaigning. And so they are following the incentive structure laid out by the media.

I don't think it's going to work. There's too much time until the election and the evidence is too obvious.

Here's Andrew Sullivan on the Bridge To Nowhere lies:

In her speeches, Sarah Palin routinely and repeatedly uses the phrase: "I told the Congress 'thanks, but no thanks,' for that Bridge to Nowhere." In the McCain-Palin ads, the claim is that she "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere."

These are, again, demonstrable lies. Again I will cite Wikipedia, since it's the fairest summary of the facts of the case, and includes all the links for you to see for yourself:

In 2006, Palin ran for governor on a "build-the-bridge" platform,^[101] attacking "spinmeisters"^[102] for insulting local residents by calling them "nowhere"^[101] and urging speed "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."^[103] About two years after the introduction of the bridge proposals, a month after the bridge received sharp criticism from John McCain,^[104] and nine months into Palin's term as governor, Palin canceled the Gravina Bridge, blaming Congress for not providing enough funding.^[105] Alaska will not return any of the $442 million to the federal government^[106] and is spending a portion of the funding, $25 million, on a Gravina Island road to the place where the bridge would have gone, expressly so that none of the money will have to be returned.^[101] Palin continues to support funding Don Young's Way, estimated as more than twice as expensive as the Gravina Bridge would have been.^[107]

Your call.

Probably much more important is this picture:



Unfortunately, I think the "lipstick on a pig" lie and the "Obama voted for comprehensive sex ed for kindergartners" lies won't hurt them. McCain can simply stand by the "Lipstick on a pig" lie, as he did on The View, and it's not something one can really prove to be false. The sex ed one won't hurt him, because the refutation doesn't make a good sound bite. Any day talking about "sex ed" and "kindergartners" is a win for McCain.

If he is brought down by his lies, it'll be the lies about Palin. The bridge, the earmarks, and McCain's and Palin's standing by them long after they'd been revealed as lies. The Obama campaign must frame the issue: "Is John McCain a liar?" The contrast between the honorable soldier he presents himself as and the dishonerable campaign he's leading represent a great opportunity for Obama. Rove took Kerry's greatest strength and turned it into his greater weakness, and Obama has the opportunity to return the favor with the message "John McCain is dishonest and dishonerable."

President Bush Lied About the Surge

Shunted to the last few paragraphs of this article by Bob Woodward:

The president announced the surge decision Jan. 10, 2007. Five more brigades would go to Baghdad; 4,000 Marines would head to Anbar province.

The next morning, he went to Fort Benning, Ga., to address military personnel and their families. His decision had been opposed by Casey and Abizaid, his military commanders in Iraq. Pace and the Joint Chiefs, his top military advisers, had suggested a smaller increase, if any at all. Schoomaker, the Army chief, had made it clear that the five brigades didn't really exist under the Army's current policy of 12-month rotations. But on this morning, the president delivered his own version of history.

"The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to -- by the way, that's what you want your commander-in-chief to do. You don't want decisions being made based upon politics or focus groups or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. They analyzed the plan, and they said to me and to the Iraqi government: 'This won't work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence.' "

Bush went on, "And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, 'Mr. President, it's not going to work until -- unless we support -- provide more troops.' "

I wish the media were more straightforward. Why wasn't their headline the one I used? They called it "Outmaneuvered And Outranked, Military Chiefs Became Outsiders." Sure, that's a big story, but what about President Bush out-and-out LYING to get his surge? Let's bury that part at the end of the article.

Damn liberal media.

For My Conservative Blog-Friends Still Defending Palin

Republican strategists Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan, believing themselves off mic:

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys -- this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it's not gonna work. And --

PN: It's over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she's never looked comfortable about this --

MM: They're all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.

In an alternate universe, television pundits would be smart people giving honest analysis even when they know the mics are on.

If America Hadn't Lost its Freaking Mind

Then this quote would be true:

By now, it's clear that "We don't torture" is going to be George Bush's equivalent to "I am not a crook" or "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"--an embarrassingly transparent, obviously untrue statement that the speaker never would have even made in the first place if he hadn't been obligated to deny something that everybody had already figured out was the case. - Phil Nugent

That this transparent lie has barely made the press is disgraceful. If only we could get an intern to give the man a blow-job.

Cheney About How Invading Iraq would Cause a Quagmire and a Fissured State

Wow. Who knew he was an America-hating liberal back in '94?

Via Radley Balko.

As Balko wrote, we already knew he said things like this, but to actually hear it... Wow.