The Star's David Olive thinks that Republican presidential hopeful John McCain lies like a rug. So why does the U.S. media not do anything about it?
I haven't followed John McCain's career closely enough to know if he is a chronic liar, or became one just to win the White House. That he has lied enough in recent months to disqualify himself for high office is plain. What's not clear is why the news media abets his brazen untruths.
McCain says Barack Obama is willing to lose a war to win the White House. Anyone who's read Obama's elaborate plans for extracting U.S. forces from Iraq over a protracted period of 16 months or longer if necessary – to the chagrin of left-wing Democrats who want out of Mesopotamia immediately – knows that's a lie.
"I know how to win wars! I know how to win wars!" McCain tells supporters. McCain, who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., has never developed or executed a war plan. His wartime experience is limited to dropping bombs on Hanoi civilians as a naval pilot and being tortured as a PoW in a war the U.S. lost. ...
Calling anyone a liar, much less a chronic one, is an allegation not to be made lightly. But journalists go beyond caution. When McCain tells a stretcher, as Mark Twain called them, journos look for a matching Obama fib for the sake of "equivalency."
Thus Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, in addressing McCain's veracity problem, feels obliged to assert that "neither candidate is running the honest, confront-the-hard questions campaign he promised." Apparently Obama should ignore the lies and hope that reciting his universal health plan will carry the day. And ignore the fate of Dems who turned the other cheek, like the swift-boated John Kerry.
We've actually gone backward in journalism, from the days when H.L. Mencken, America's most popular columnist in the 1930s and 1940s, could flat-out call FDR a "mountebank" and worse things. Confronted with a GOP strategy of lying loudly and often in the reasonable expectation that the mendacity will stick, the best the mainstream media can do is talk about a "nasty campaign on both sides," and perhaps note that McCain is shading the truth a bit more aggressively.
It was clear coming into this campaign none of the issues were on the GOP's side, and it's no surprise it soon adopted its time-honoured tactic of character assassination. That the Republicans haven't been called out on this is a journalistic disgrace. It explains the popularity of straight-talking online political sites and The Daily Show.
What's the difference between a campaign of "hard questions" about momentous issues and a carnival of lies? Lipstick. And a pol who once prided himself on being a man of principle and honour.