Missoula Notebook

Did You Know John McCain… is a Liar?

Wow. That's bad. I've noticed that this election is focused on Obama. Obama says why he's good. McCain says why Obama is bad. Obama doesn't say why McCain is bad, nor does McCain say why he's good.
I hate the bashing that political campaigns bring about.
Good series, I look forward to more.

look no further for evidence that John McCain is liar than his marriage to Cindy McCain. John McCain started dating Cindy while married to his first wife. (Now that's a moral compass!)

I know, right? I love how all of the "values voters" seem to prefer the guy who ran around on his wife (the wife who waited for him while he was a POW, no less!), instead of the guy who is a true "conservative" in his personal life. Now, MY retort would be that the candidates' and their spouses' personal lives aren't relevant, but it's these same people who wanted to see Bill Clinton impeached for the same sort of thing.

Pretty fatuous stuff, folks...

Sutton, you asked, "...who is willing to lie his way into office?" According to FactCheck, Obama is the guy. For just one of many examples of the Obama rhetoric of the type that has your knickers in a twist see: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/distorting_mccains_remarks.html

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Obama's campaign is running a TV ad in Indiana that asks the question: "How can John McCain fix the economy, when he doesn't think it's broken?" But the ad uses quotes from McCain that are old and taken out of context...The economy has worsened since McCain's debate comments back in January, and so has his public assessment. This month McCain's campaign released an ad that begins with these words from an announcer: "Washington's broken. John McCain knows it. We're worse off than we were four years ago."

Nevertheless, Obama's ad ends by asking: "How can John McCain fix the economy, when he doesn't think it's broken?"

By using months-old quotes and selective editing, the Obama ad distorts McCain's assessment of the economy.
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Rocks from glass houses lead to a shattered reality.

I was just reading John's comment above, when "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang" came up on my iTunes. God, I love this random universe...

@Craig: you're so fair and balanced, I love it!

Sutton, someone has to play Colmes to your Hannity moments. ;?p

I encourage readers to follow that link of Craig's, just so they can read the full, confusing quotes in which McCain tries to say "times are tough" without saying "it's Bush's fault," which of course he wouldn't want to do, since his policies and plans basically add up to a return to Bush's first term -- but even more aggressive and warlike! Fun times!

Sutton, I encourage you to read Bob Wire's colum. See: http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/im_not_voting_for_michelle_obama/C564/L564/

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Character? Look, people. Obama is a politician. So we already know he’s a cheat and a liar and a back-stabber. Grow up.
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By your standard ("consider whether you really want a president who is willing to lie his way into office") every candidate would be disqualified.

Have you noticed the ponderous chain Biden has forged: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/08/26/field

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By choosing Joe Biden as his running mate, Barack Obama has insulted academics — students and teachers alike — a constituency that was significant in bringing him the nomination of his party. Especially in a year that has seen two prominent political careers hamstrung by sex scandals, and in an era where choosing vice presidential candidates seems to be foremost an exercise in avoiding skeletons in the closet, it’s surprising that Biden’s record of plagiarism did not disqualify him from Obama’s consideration.

Joe Biden, you will remember, ran for president in 1988. He delivered a speech that presented the thoughts of British Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock is if they were his own, and was slow to explain or apologize for this transgression. The ensuing scrutiny of Biden’s record revealed that he had also plagiarized in law school, failing a course for doing so. Shortly after these revelations, he dropped out of the race.

The entire affair was a shabby and unfortunate business. Operatives from the competing Dukakis campaign secretly videotaped the offending speech, then leaked it to the press. When Dukakis found out, he fired his campaign manager, John Sasso, and replaced him with Susan Estrich, who turned out to be a much better legal scholar than campaign manager.

To a degree, appropriating Kinnock for a stump speech is an understandable offense. There is not the presumption of original and unique authorship in the words that come out of a politician’s mouth. Just ask Peggy Noonan. However, the phrasing of Biden’s speech, prefaced Kinnock’s sentiments with language that indicated that these were his thoughts. This incident suggests the same kind of troubling indifference to the truth that has been a hallmark of the current administration, but on its own, perhaps not worthy of ending a political career.

The incident in law school is more concerning, at least from the perspective of any educator. The kind of wholesale plagiarism Biden evidently committed, copying chunks of a law review article into a paper with his name on it, suggests an inclination toward the kind of malfeasance present in the Kinnock incident.
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Sutton, Jonathan Beecher Field is not going to let Biden get in his way of holding his nose.

Another take on the plagiarism non-story: http://mediamatters.org/items/200808230003

Oh, and Craig, Bob has convinced me: not only am I not voting for Michelle Obama, I've decided not to vote for Reverend Wright either.

Sutton, you actually missed the story which was about Biden's intellectual theft in law school which resulted in him flunking the course. That was the point of Mr. Field's article as it related to the broader issue.

Thanks, Craig. I wasn't referring to the article you sent as "the story" (post in haste, regret at leisure!) but rather the overall kerfuffle about Biden's supposed plagiarism in two instances, the speech and during his first year of law school, both of which have received semi-extensive coverage in the last week or so. Indeed, as Craig points out, the article I linked to is only about the speech, not the law-school paper, which does appear more egregious.

A big hand for Craig, folks! He's here all week!

Sutton, I'll let the sarcasm slide. Just one more comment then I am done. Bob's comment applies to all politicians. They will all break your heart....and the other guy is never nearly as bad as we may want that person to be to justify a position that many don't want to change. Human nature.

May our nation continue to survive the kerfuffle with an election every 4 years.

Hang on though....weren't "small countries" such as Cuba, East Germany, Vietnam, Korea, Hungary, Czechoslovakia vitally important in the Cold War? Iran is much larger than any of those, has infinitely more potential oil wealth, etc.

Sounds like a man gearing himself up for disappointment in November, as any realistic McCain supporter should be. (I guess I'm just assuming Craig is a McCain supporter, though, so I could be wrong.)

Also sounds like what some Greens were saying in 2000, against the claim that Nader might end up throwing the election to Bush. But I would have to disagree with you, Craig (about how the other guy is never as bad as you think) and point out that Bush turned out to be almost unimaginably worse than most people had, well, imagined.

As for McCain, this is also just simply not a "six vs. half dozen" election: I agree with Andrew Sullivan, who warns of the dangers of "a hotheaded temperament and uber-neo-con mindset in the White House for another four years." http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/america-against.html

Here is a man (McCain) who clearly loves power more than he loves honor or truth (is there any position he espoused in 2000 that he has not now reversed?), who once claimed to despise Rovian tactics but who has now embraced them, who swore there would be no Swift boating but now won't denounce Corsi's hit job of a book, filled with patent falsehoods though it is. McCain once stood on principle, until the focus groups showed him he couldn't win that way.

Given these character flaws, and given as well our consistently weak Congress and the precedent of the current administration's hatred of both democracy and the Constitution they perjured themselves by swearing to defend, I really believe that a McCain presidency poses a grave peril to the nation we love.

Oh, and thanks for letting the sarcasm slide. Having seen your rifle, I wouldn't want to get on your bad side. :)

@Joey: your question/point is not clear. Please elaborate.

Sutton, with my antelope and deer tags secured, my sights will be set on more edible targets. ;~p

Take care.

I have heard I am a little gamey. Good luck this season.

My only ding on the Obama "truthiness" scale is his claim of having an impoverished upbringing. His maternal grandparents raised his mother in Bellvue, Washington, more Nordstrom than Jesse Jackson. When his mother decided he was a burden in her quest for whatever it was she was seeking, those aspirations and goals that were not quite mainstream poor white America, Obama went to live with his maternal grandparents in Hawaii where he went to Punahou School, the top rated high school sports program in America according to Sports Illustrated, the largest private college prep school in America. Tuition this year is a shade more than $16,000. There is scholarship help. Obama was at the least in an upper middle class situation with his white maternal grandparents in Hawaii. He was in no way impoverished. I would say nothing about his mother because his was only a part time mother, and his father was little more than a sperm donor who left before the kid was even in school, and went back to Kenya to claim he was 98% Arab and 2% African. Sure. Anything you say, Sir.

Obama is smart, academically, and has shown initiative and a disciplined search for his goal. I read in the Economist that he was for 12 years a part of the faculty at the U of Chicago law school, if not a full time member. I don't know how he scraped together the money to live, with all his political work for free, and social work, but I suspect the white maternal grandparents might have had a much softer spot in their hearts for him and his sister than they did his mother, and he just possibly could have inherited some dough. That his wife Michelle was a hot rod corporate lawyer is a way to pay some bills. Her brother, the new basketball coach at Oregon State, was a successful broker turned basketball coach at great financial loss. I have to respect his moral compass and desire to follow his heart. If his sister shares some of those values, and is with Obama because he, too, is a like thinker, then all might not be lost to a very green rookie in the big leagues from single A ball in one season. It is the sophomore year slump that has me worried. I will probably vote, holding my nose, for McCain. The Oligarchs of the Environment have too much money invested in Democrats and none in Republicans, so the least I can do is to try to level that field just a teensy, weensy little tiny bit.

McCain in the membrane!

Bear Bait,
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. You've clearly considered the situation carefully. Can you direct me to a quote in which Obama claims literally to have an "impoverished" upbringing?

As for the financial struggles he described his grandmother having in his speech last night, this sounds realistic to me, whether he attended a good private school or not. I know because I went to one myself, one of the best in D.C., at a time when my family essentially had one income, and not a large one at that. As you say, there is scholarship help, and often schools like these want to have a wide range of diversity, including economic, so they'll take a hit on tuition. (Very few students pay full tuition at a lot of private high schools and universities; basically the few truly rich students subsidize the school's ability to have a wide-randing student body.)