Yesterday, Jonah Goldberg, in his weekly waste of newsprint, spent his entire column on an Obama campaign advert, as if it were a lie or something, & not very effective, either. Unnoticed (certainly unmentioned) by Mr. Goldberg was the non-stop barrage of lies, more lies, & damned lies issuing from the McCain-Palin campaign, lies about Sen. Obama, lies that Gov. Sarah Pitbull tells about herself, and just bullshit in general.
Today at the
WaPo, one of their house flunkies examined Sen. McCain & his recent record. As always, the juiciest parts may be found here.
"I broke my promise to always tell the truth," McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.
That's where one may first notice that Mr. Cohen is a Broderesque fool. There's only one sort of politician, and that would be a "politician." Their very motives (greed, lust, power, self-aggrandizement,
ad nauseum) are suspect, as are those of an op-ed writer who thinks some of them are somehow special or different. Ninny!!
I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.
Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story -- that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.
Can Mr. Cohen can even define "integrity" any more, let alone point to anyone, in any sort of public life, who can stake the slightest claim to said quality? (Which, regular readers of this screed will recall, is one of those vague concepts such as "honor," "courage" & "patriotism" that have never truly meant much, & have had most of their actual meaning taken from them through their constant repetition by those who should be the very last to invoke them.)
McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.
Here's where you don't get it/them at all, Mr. C. (This is also a condition that occurs in law-enforcement & security/intelligence agencies. The country must be saved, and
we are the best agency/group/person to do it, therefore it is as important to national survival to jostle for precedence, not share information, & so on, w/ competitors on our side, as it is to deal w/ the enemy without.) Sen. McCain probably believes that Sen. Obama really is a stealth Marxist-Muslim dying to turn us over to the Saudis (oh, wait...) & whatever he does against Obama is justified. Or he's yet another Republican simpleton who's turned his campaign over to clowns who'll only be remembered if they "win," not how.
Either way, he's a lying sack of shit. Sen. Obama? They haven't caught him in any whoppers yet. Except when he denies his Muslim Marxism.
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