What Scares You More?
That a presidential campaign is caught repeatedly lying about the relationship between one of its key operatives and two collapsed federal mortgage lenders (and doesn’t seem to care) or that the same campaign continues to shield its vice-presidential candidate from taking questions from the national press corps?
I’m not sure which is worse, but I do know that this is scary stuff for a variety of reasons:
- If lying about your own policies (or the policies of your opponent), your ties to certain firms or individuals, etc. carries no political repercussions, then what value (if any) does empirical truth have to voters?
- If somebody can slide into the White House without having to give an honest accounting of their views, then what tangible value does the press have to the public?
- How can the press fight back against being demagogued for simply doing their jobs?
Oh, and for the record, it’s been 40 days since McCain or Palin has given a press conference.
Wednesday morning update: McCain did hold a 15 minute press conference yesterday. It’s better than nothing, I suppose.
Wednesday afternoon update: The McCain campaign released a statement blasting the New York Times article from yesterday about Rick Davis but didn’t challenge the validity of the story (link isn’t posting, so here’e the URL):
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/McCain_camp_attacks_Times_doesnt_deny_report.html
September 24th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
The Republican Party lost all credibility a long time ago. Their goal is to obtain and hold power and ram their agenda down the throats of Americans using any means necessary, ethics and morality and common decency be damned.
Even reliable Republican mouthpiece David Brooks of the New York Times admitted in a column years ago that Bush administration officials had told him they intended to be blatantly dishonest in their public relations. Now that Karl Rove’s proteges are helping run McCain’s campaign, it’s no surprise that it’s based on lies and distortions. Unfortunately, way too many Americans are either not cynical enough or not well-informed enough to realize they’re being manipulated by this crowd.