by Damozel | Attaturk: "America's Concern Troll is very concerned and for once, legitimately." Heh. At WaPo, Richard Cohen writes:
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...
Not so....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.
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. (More...)
Scott Lemieux doesn't believe in Cohen's---or, I guess, my---imaginary McCain-2000. (In fairness to myself, I wasn't listening carefully since I'd never under any circumstances have voted for him; I merely took him for a comparatively good, i.e., Bush-opposing Republican; and took him for his word in re: his truthfulness).
I'm inclined to simply agree with Brad DeLong, who correctly notes that "Richard Cohen's fantasy McCain never existed--save in the mind of Richard Cohen, the journalist-as-puppy." Everything unsavory about McCain's current campaign, including the lying and flip-flops, were perfectly evident during the 2000 primaries...[P]recisely because of the bogus narrative of Saint McCain the press so carefully cultivated, these too-little-too-late departures from the Straight Talk Express are unfortunately unlikely to have much effect. . (LG&M)
I felt better reading Jeff Fecke at Alas, a Blog. Back in 2000, many people were willing to take him at face value, in spite of (wait for it) the Keating 5 and other red flags in his past. We might not have agreed with him, but we trusted his presentation of himself.
Let's face it, the Bush administration has made a lot of formerly ingenuous types, including some Democrats, into cynics. If we were wrong about him then, at least the scales fell from our eyes pretty early on. Fecke says:
As I’ve written many times, there are two John McCains. “John McCain” is an honorable, likable guy, a conservative, sure, but not an asshole about it. He’s able to work across the aisle, listen to and respect his opponents, and generally behave in an honorable fashion. “John McCain” disappeared in 2006, replaced by John McCain: a nasty, surly jerk who’s willing to lie, cheat, and steal his way to the presidency. Up until last week, the media wanted very much to believe that the real John McCain was “John McCain.” But now, with McCain standing behind the lies and deceit of his campaign, there’s no hiding the fact that the guy calling himself John McCain these days is not honorable.
And this is a problem — because honor was the one thing McCain could sell, the one thing he had that no other Republican could offer. Absent that, he’s Mitt Romney with a war record, George W. Bush, only grumpier.(Fecke)
Kathy at Comments from Left Field writes soberly, and hopefully:
Yesterday, a Fox News interviewer hammered Tucker Bounds relentlessly for John McCain’s lies about Obama. Today, Richard Cohen writes the sharpest critique I have ever seen from him about the “ugly new McCain.” Could it be that the media is actually developing a true, solid narrative about McCain?
Attaturk thinks not:
Tweety Matthews was actually on television decrying McCain's campaign tactics as beyond sleazy while declaring McCain somehow is unaware of it. James Carville recently did exactly the same thing on CNN.
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT.
I imagine the scales will not fall from their eyes even now...
And despite Cohen's lamentations don't count out his ability to give a shallow, convincing, hair-shirted performance to the media-whores inclined to want to forgive him. Tom Brokaw is fluffing...his pillows...as you read this.
But as for me, I will respond in that eventuality the same way I respond now, with a well-earned and deserved one-fingered salute.(FDL)
Jeff Fecke muses on the current implosion of McCain's strategy of lying right in America's face.
[T]he lies were so audacious, so over-the-top, so clearly lies that the press has taken a giant step back from John McCain, and granted him the adversarial relationship he’s been claiming in the face of all evidence....
The lying gambit could have worked. Had the McCain camp been more willing to wait for the election to draw near, they could have used lies and distortion in the waning days of the campaign to swing the election their way. But they got impatient. And they pulled the trigger on the strategy too hard, too early. And in doing so, they made what could prove to be a catastrophic miscalculation.
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