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McCain doesn’t think his campaign is ‘negative in the slightest’

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I don’t know which presidential campaign John McCain is watching, but it certainly isn’t his own. The presumptive Republican nominee held a press conference in Florida yesterday, and offered a “unique” perspective on his efforts.

* Said “I don’t think our campaign is negative in the slightest.” There are negative McCain ads running as we speak, and in the very same presser, he attacked Obama for injecting race into the campaign again.

* Blamed Obama for bringing up the issue of race in the campaign, and repeatedly said that Obama had “retracted” his charge that McCain is using race. It was obvious by the repetition of “retracted” that this was a cooked up talking point, and it was apparently a reference to the fact that the Obama campaign said it didn’t think McCain had used race in the campaign. But this wasn’t a “retraction” at all: The Obama camp hasn’t conceded he said that in the first place.

* Described a new Web ad implying that Obama believes he’s the Messiah as “having some fun.”

Isn’t “negative in the slightest.” Hmm. It seemed to me his campaign isn’t positive in the slightest, and McCain has been so relentlessly negative that even the Republican establishment is taken aback, but maybe McCain’s confused.

Let’s refresh his memory a bit. The McCain campaign has unveiled five television ads in the last two weeks. All five attack Barack Obama, and all five include obvious and demonstrable falsehoods. The McCain campaign, over the last three weeks, have unveiled five web videos. Four of the five attack Obama, and each of them are wildly misleading.

But it’s obviously not just the advertising. In his speeches and interviews, McCain has said Obama deliberately wants to lose a war. The campaign has an ad in heavy rotation blaming Obama for high gas prices. McCain and his gang spent a week pushing a bogus smear about Obama snubbing injured U.S. troops. McCain suggested Obama might be a “socialist.” The McCain campaign even hinted that Obama is weak on genocide.

But don’t worry, the McCain campaign isn’t “negative in the slightest.”

Prominent media voices, many of whom have expressed admiration for McCain, are noticing just how wrong this is.

Joe Klein:

A few months ago, I wrote that John McCain was an honorable man and he would run an honorable campaign. I was wrong. I used to think, as David Ignatius does, that McCain’s true voice was humble and moderate…

Courage is grace under pressure. McCain showed it when he was a prisoner of war, and on many issues–yes, even on his stubborn insistence that the surge would work–but he is not showing it now. He is showing flop sweat. It is not a quality usually associated with successful leadership.

Eugene Robinson:

It’s awfully early for John McCain to be running such a desperate, ugly campaign against Barack Obama. But I guess it’s useful for Democrats to get a reminder that the Republican Party plays presidential politics by the same moral code that guided the bad-boy Oakland Raiders in their heyday: “Just win, baby.” […]

Negative campaigning is not a pretty thing, and it should be beneath John McCain to stoop so low.

John Heileman:

Until last week, it was an open question which of these visions of McCain bore a closer relation to reality. But with the weeklong string of attacks uncorked by the Arizona senator and his people during Obama’s trip abroad and in its aftermath — some brutal, some mocking, but all personal and focused on Obama’s character — we now have an inkling of just how deep in the mud McCain and his people are willing to wallow in order to win in November: right up to their Republican eyeballs.

As countless fact-checkers and tsk-tskers have maintained, the broadsides were a blend of distortion, innuendo, and outright slander. […]

The motor behind his operation now is Steve Schmidt, the shaven-headed strategist who earned his bones running Karl Rove’s war room in 2004, Frenchifying and de-war-heroizing John Kerry. What Schmidt and his associates have apparently concluded is that McCain’s weaknesses — on the election’s most salient issues and as a candidate — are so pronounced and Obama’s vulnerabilities so glaring that the low road is their guy’s best, and maybe only, route to the White House. They’ve concluded, in other words, that even if McCain may not be able to win the election in any affirmative sense, he might still wind up behind the big desk if he and his people can strip the bark off Obama with sufficiently vicious force.

I mention these examples — there are many more — not just to undercut McCain’s painfully ridiculous claim that his campaign hasn’t gone negative, but also because it’s media voices like these that help shape the conventional wisdom.

And if there’s a consensus that John McCain has become a small, cheap, vicious smear-monger — a description that has the added benefit of being true — it’s the kind of narrative that may affect McCain’s standing. Something to keep an eye on.

Comments

  • barkleyg

    says:

    Hang out with dogs, you get fleas. Hang with Turdblossom’s minions, you get a campaign run from the gutter, by people lower than gutter scum. Obama didn’t say McSame, he said “others”. What did that bum bard Shakespeare say about McSame protesting too much?

  • Steve

    says:

    “I don’t think our campaign is negative in the slightest.”

    Translation—“That’s because I know that our campaign is negative in the mostest.”

    What can I say? McCain is dumber than roadkill. At least the roadkill knows it’s dead, and isn’t gallivanting all across the country pretending to be something that it has never been, is not now, and will never be, while spreading its stench.

    Roadkill knows its place in the greater order of all things. McCain does not….

  • Mark-NC

    says:

    You are making an assumption here that is probably wrong. You are assuming that McCain actually knows what his own campaign is running inline and on TV.

    I’m betting that he hasn’t got a clue.

  • maya

    says:

    Obama’s camp should put out a simple ad:

    Is John McCain running for President of the United States or America’s Funniest Politician?

  • Aeolus

    says:

    Of course McCain knows what ads they’re running. They send him clips via email before they do anything, and if he objects, they change course.

  • Michael

    says:

    And this, finally, is the end result of eight years of the Bush administration:

    Words no longer mean anything.

    If McCain’s ads aren’t “negative,” then the word has no meaning. “Smear” is now the same as “drawing contrasts;” “lying” is now just “one side of the story.” McCain can, with a straight face, look at the media and tell them he’s not running a negative campaign, all evidence to the contrary. Never mind what your own lying eyes tell you, McCain’s protests of innocence now share the same respectability as complaints that his campaign is taking the lowest of roads. It’s not going to effect his campaign; it’s what his campaign is counting on.

    McCain can’t push his own negatives down any lower. He’s a Republican running to replace George W Bush; they’re as low as they’re going to get. As you’ve said yourself, he’s never going to dip too much below 40%, but he can do everything in his power to drag Obama down there with him and hope for a slim margin of victory (another Rove staple).

    It doesn’t matter if Joe Klein shuns him. It wouldn’t even matter if Richard Cohen lost his faith. Words no longer mean anything, and McCain will say whatever he damn well pleases, no matter how false or outrageous it is. Who’s gonna call him on it? Bloggers? Rick Davis will just pop on MSNBC and say it’s a prefectly legitimate line of questioning to wonder if Obama will let Iran enslave Israel, and the good people of Flag City, USA will think, “Well, on the one hand, that sounds a little crazy, but on the other hand, someone on the TV said it wasn’t. I just don’t know what to think.

    I guess I should vote for the experienced guy.”

  • James

    says:

    How the “race card” trap worked:

    Sunday 7/27: McCain campaign, after peppering Obama with the “presumptuous” charge, asks in a video, “what will change next, the hundred dollar bill? (shows Obama’s face on $100 bill).” Watch.

    Wed 7/30: Obama, in a standard stump speech, asserts that his opposition will make you afraid of him because he’s somehow abnormal, “that I don’t look like the other people whose pictures are on our currency.”

    Thurs 7/31: McCain team springs into full attack mode, pouncing on that line with the claim that Obama is “playing the race card,” thus injecting the issue of race into the campaign one day before

    Fri 8/1: McCain appears at the National Urban League, a primarily African-American organization. McCain is now guaranteed to dominate news coverage with the issue of race, an issue that will clearly work against Obama. Before sunrise, the line that McCain supposedly objected to had been forgotten.

    (credit ohiomeister posting at TPM Election Central for the youtube reference)

  • Joreen Kelly

    says:

    It is so sad that with all the issues we as Americans face and dangers that are present in the world that we have to put up with the nonstop lies and negativity. I gave McCain credit in the beginning that he would run a good clean campaign. Now it seems as though the John McCain I was used to is being manipulated by unscrupulous handlers.
    I have noticed that McCain seems to have aged quite a bit since the primaries started. It’s a grueling schedule for anyone, much less someone of his “experience.” His look, his voice — it all seems to be getting older before our eyes which makes me wonder who is really running for the office, McCain or the people who are propping him up.
    The United States and the world doesn’t have time for games.

  • ROTFLMLiberalAO

    says:

    For McCain the shortest path to November isn’t a straight line… it is a crooked one.
    Josh Marshall summarized McCain’s hyperbolic path perfectly:

    McCain has made the strategic decision that he can only win the election on the basis of Obama as friend of terrorists, unpatriotic suspicious outsider and radical, black guy who’s really more a flashy showbiz star (call it playing the Diddy card) than someone with the heft to be president. He’s probably right. That’s his only chance. And it may work.

    I added the emphasis because if anyone truly believes “it may work,” (and that after 8 years of the worse government in our lifetimes) what have you really said about the modern American state? And I’d follow that up with these question: Do you think America can be saved? Or should individuals who see the third-world writing on the wall look only to flee and save themselves?

  • fillphil

    says:

    Race is the issue that drives the Republican Party. Always has and always will. When you look deeper into the McCain ads and see the subliminal message you can understand the method. They are designed to appeal to the base racial instincts of their Party. Black guy/Two blondes etc. The Press never talks about this aspect of their tactics. McCain needs to be talked about for what he really represents- a race baiter and liar. It’s these things they are confident that the base will be roused enough to vote.

  • Chopin

    says:

    The Obama camp should run a smear TeeVee ad spot similar to one of McCain’s. It should end with “I am Barak Obama and this message is a vile and baseless smear on my oponent’s character unworthy of a 5th grader, let alone a candidate for the office of President of the United States of America. I do NOT endorse this or any similar message. But Senator McCain would and has. I implore him and his campaign and the media to eschew this nonsense and elevate the debate to issues of importance to our citizen’s quality of life.”

  • Bad Cookies

    says:

    Hi honey it’s me Cindy just to remind you to take your medication, drink plenty of milk and remember I have some hashish in the brownies. Oh dear, I wasn’t making a racist batch of brownies, hee,hee.
    Remember to veto all beer, give my best to the girl scouts I’ll try to steal their recipes next.
    I’m happy you’ve come to see God in a new light… love and kisses your teenager bride, blond and beautiful and better then Paris in the spring, and Brittney beaches.

  • karen marie

    says:

    you just don’t get it. it’s not negative, it’s entertaining! you’re supposed to laugh! don’t you get it?

    man, you voters just don’t have a sense of humor.

    [tongue firmly in cheek]

  • zeitgeist

    says:

    not negative in the slightest

    Translation: and you’ll agree, in a relative sense, when you see what we say in our ads and speeches and under-the-radar direct mail come October!

  • karen marie

    says:

    did anyone see jimmy kimmel last night? he did an excellent piece on the issue of whether obama’s “presidential” where he alternated clips from obama’s germany speech captioned “non-presidential” with clips of the idiot-in-chief behind a podium captioned “presidential.”

    why can’t someone run THAT as a tv ad? i would laugh and laugh and laugh.

  • jhm

    says:

    From CNN

    QUESTION: Senator, factcheck.org, the nonpartisan fact-checking Web site, has cited eight or nine of your recent ads as containing false or misleading information. I was wondering how you would respond to this, and how do you reconcile it with your pledge to run an honorable campaign?

    MCCAIN: I don’t respond to Web sites that I have no idea what they’re talking about.

    I’m proud of our campaign. We have been fair. We have been balanced. And we have clearly pointed out the differences between myself and Senator Obama.

    And I’d be glad to go through those with you. He wants higher taxes. I want to keep taxes low.

    I’m not sure what the gratuitous tax bit was about (that was the entirely of his answer), but we need Hon. Sen. McCain to answer more questions like this one, only with a bill of particulars. If this accomplished nothing else, it would present the growing list of nonsense eminating from the campaign, and defended by the candidate, in a cumulative fashion, not a series of stories that sometimes seem like they’re all about one incident.

  • Michael

    says:

    I added the emphasis because if anyone truly believes “it may work,” (and that after 8 years of the worse government in our lifetimes) what have you really said about the modern American state?

    That would be the modern American state that gave us 8 years of the worse(sic) government in our lifetimes. That would be the same American state that thinks drilling for offshore oil will lower the price at the pump in mere months. That would be the same American state that about 20% of which still believe Obama to be a Muslim.

    So I guess what I’m saying is the modern American state is pretty dumb, gullible, easily manipulated, or some combination of all three.

    That doesn’t mean we all have to re-locate to a less insane country, but we should recognize that, to save America, it’s going to take a long, hard slog of educating individuals one by one. I just hope we can do so in time for Nov. 4.

  • Obama is Racist Himself

    says:

    Mr. Obama is like a weather vane. The wind has to go his way or he will invoke the “race card.” He did it with Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and probably throughout allhis political career. Now he is facing the outcomes of his unorthodox “race card” practice. He is inexperienced, out of track with the Americaqn People, and relies on young voters to bring him into the white house. He has earned the title of perverting young people. Wake up America! Mr. Obama is not the one for the white house. Maybe in a few more years as he gets experience and stops all of his notorious “flip Flopping.”

  • -jayinge-

    says:

    Please! Please! Please CB! You’ve got to stop using terms such as “McCain’s confused” and “let’s refresh his memory.” Those are evil liberal pejorative words that imply that St. John of the Straight Talk is too old or possibly presenile, rather, you should use terms such as “selectively positive” or “inversely optimistic.” Selective rejection of disquieting data always works too. 😉

  • American Citizen

    says:

    This the response to Joreen Kelly (post # 9). You are an ignorant person who has no civil or human thinking. You said that Senator (a hero) is aging. How about you? Are you getting younger? I don’t think so. You are aging too and it seems as you age, you are getting more ignorant and naive. Not to mention stupid and unhuman. Why don’t you move to Cuba qnd practice your antihuman discrimination of age? They will love you over there. Grow up and get a life.

  • American Citizen

    says:

    This is also for Joreen Kelly (Post # 9). I forgot to mention that there is a lot of room for you in Mars. Over there you will age and no one will discriminate your old age. You will grow old, alone, and desperate as you seem you are. Remember the skeleton is telling you “as you see me you will see yourself soon.” Again. get a life and stop discriminating about Senator McCain’s (a hero) age.

  • jon, Huntsville, AL

    says:

    “Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

    – Hermann Goerring

    ——————————————————————————–

    “Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.”

    – Julius Caesar

  • AB

    says:

    Oh yea thin skinned, dim-witted mccai-diots. Isn’t it obvious that the Mccain camp fell all over itself trying to defend itself from something Obama didn’t even say. Sure, maybe implicit, but not explicit. And its not far from the truth. The Mccain camp and the republicans have been implying all along, “Look, Obama is Black, we won’t say that but you know what that means…” (you fill in the blank). Mccain has been running negative ads against Obama all last week. Trying to align him with disfunctional starlets, claiming it’s his fault gas is so expensive, down playing his call for the American people to take personal action as “Godlike,” and all but calling him a hallow person with no substance or anything else they could think of. But the minute Obama seem to align Mccain and his repugnl-ican buddies as RACIST, KKK, HOMOPHOBES, all hell breaks lose and the Mccain camp is crying about the race card being played against them. If he don’t won’t to be called a name, then he shouldn’t be calling others names. My folks always told me, “IF YOU’RE LIVING IN A GLASS HOUSE, THEN DON’T THROW NO STONES!!!” Seems like Mccain and the repugnli-cans should clean up their act if they don’t want to be portrayed as the RACIST BIGOTS that they are.
    As for Obama getting 90-95% of the African American vote, just look at Mccain’s legislative record and you will see why no reasonable African American would ever support Mccain. His legislative records on African American issues shows as much. For that matter, his homestate of ARIZONA DON’T EVEN RECOGNIZE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. HOLIDAY, which is a FEDERAL HOLIDAY. That’s the reason Obama will get the African American vote, not because Obama is Black, because he isn’t Black. He his Bi-RACIAL.

  • American Citizen

    says:

    AB on post # 25 doesn’t know what he is talking about. He sounds like someone who just woke up after sleeping for 50,000+ years. Mr. AB your insults for McCain and the ones who believe in him are unreasonable and uncalled for. You sound just like Joreen Kelly Post # 9. Maybe you are the same person under another screen name. You know your Senator Obama is false and so are you. Also, you are just like Obama always calling the “race card.” If you cannot take the heat, then get out of the kitchen. Move to another country where they are willing to put up with your insanity and low mentality. Good luck to them. Get a life and grow up.

  • American Citizen

    says:

    AB on post # 25. you said My folks always told me “IF YOU’RE LIVING IN A GLASS HOUSE, THEN DON’T THROW NO STONES!!!” Regretfully, your folks never told you that if you cannot take the heat you should get out of the kitchen. Practice what you preach and learn to take the heat. Show your maturity instead of your insanity and low perspective about life. Maybe you are Mr. Barack Obama in here using the screen name AB.

  • ROTFLMLiberalAO

    says:

    …but we should recognize that, to save America, it’s going to take a long, hard slog of educating individuals one by one. I just hope we can do so in time for Nov. 4.

    Sic. Pollyanna sick to the nth power. I remember the same sentiment in 2000. And 2004. Here it is again in 2008. Here is a quote from a recent Newsweek piece by Jonathan Alter:

    The United States now ranks 25th among 30 industrialized countries in math. “If I told you your basketball team finished in 25th place, you’d be outraged,” says former West Virginia governor Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education. When the landmark “A Nation at Risk” report was issued 25 years ago, the education system was ailing, but the United States was still No. 1 in college-graduation rates. Now we are No. 21.

    Say what? You hope to educate voters in time for November?
    The trend is not your friend. In fact you’d have to be an absolute fool not to see where this country has been trending for 25 years:

    Post-industrial third world nation riddled with obese brutes lacking manners, charm, and critical thinking skills.

    If McCain wins, I wish you optimistic freaks all the luck in the world.

  • libra

    says:

    Isn’t “negative in the slightest.” Hmm. It seemed to me his campaign isn’t positive in the slightest — CB

    I have to agree with Benen that McCain’s campaign hasn’t been positive in the slightest, at least for the past 10 or so days; it hasn’t been about McCain, but all about Obama. Now, say we *also* accept McCain’s statement that his campaign hasn’t been negative in the slightest…

    Doesn’t it mean that the campaign simply *hasn’t been*, seeing as two negatives cancel one another?

    Of course McCain knows what ads they’re running. They send him clips via email […] — Aeolus, @5

    That’s *proof positive* that he *doesn’t* have a clue about those ads. Unless Cindy is around to open those e-mailed clips for him (and, if I were her, I’d stay away as much as I could), he’ll never get to see them. He’s still learning how to cope with the basics of the intertubes and, at 72, it’s not a quick process.

  • American Citizen

    says:

    Libra (Post # 29). What in the heck are you talking about? Are you OK? Are you drunk? Are you on drugs? You don’t make any sense at all. Besides, McCain (a hero) made it to 72 (Big accomplishment in life). How about you? No one knows when we will die. So, McCain’s age is something to respect and admire because we don’t know if we ever make it that far. You need to grow up! If you need help call 911 because you are aging as we speak.

  • Jim G

    says:

    Al Capone is reported as being perplexed at the public’s anger at him declaring that he was just a business man provided a needed service.

  • Richard

    says:

    It’s certainly no coincidence that McCain’s campaign took a sharp turn to the negative side after he gave former associates of Karl Rove a stronger role in his campaign. It should be laughable when they try to make it a negative that Obama is so well received around the world, except that it seems to work with some people. I guess it would be much better to have people elsewhere continue to see our president as an arrogant, ignorant, corrupt buffoon as they do now rather than as someone who offers hope for a better future. And I guess anybody who is articulate and intelligent must be an elitist. We need someone who doesn’t pretend to know anything and can’t get through a speech without lsing track of his own thoughts so we can feel better about ourselves

  • Bruno

    says:

    American Citizen How many points have you earned as a troll for the McCain camp? Just wondering, as your postings are not worthy of a rebuttal.

    Thanks for the link ROTFLMLiberalAO @ 28 regarding Newsweek education article. Referring to the Teachers union, the article mentioned:

    the ideological stranglehold of a retrograde liberal interest group

    Considering that he was lambasting the unions for not wanting to change their ways, and that they are clinging to Paleolithic Education standards and methods and that they’ll fight against any merit pay proposal, etc…

    Now when also considering that ‘not wanting change’ and fighting against all ‘progressive’ proposals is mostly a conservative trait, doesn’t it stand to reason that Jonathan Alter should have referred to those unions as:

    the ideological stranglehold of a retrograde conservative interest group

    when he referred to the members of Paleolithic teachers unions

    Just a thought.

  • Blaidd Drwg

    says:

    Who was it who said, “Lord, please let my enemies be ridiculous”?

    McLaim appears to be campaigning FOR Obama, he certainly spends 90% of his money talking about him, while never giving us a reason to vot FOR McBush.

  • Blaidd Drwg

    says:

    American Citizen # 30: I do respect McC for reaching 72, BUT my uncle is 72, and he’s bats**t crazy, (Early stage Alzheimers) I certainly wouldn’t want HIM running anything more complicated than a wheelchair.

    There is no evidence that advanced age has anything to do with increased wisdom. “Isn’t it amazing how “Mature Wisdom” resembles being too tired”?

  • CeeAyy

    says:

    American Citizen… I had a good laugh when I read your comments. They are not based in reality. It was interesting to see that your comments received the attention and respect that they deserved. You were being treated like a child at the adult’s table. Being ignored is a difficult thing, isn’t it? It’s kind of hard to have a fight by yourself, isn’t it? Considering the comments surrounding you, you seemed a little crazy. That just might explain your taste in politicians and also the responses you received. Just a thought.

  • AvangionQ

    says:

    I think we have to start agreeing on what reality is at this point … when a presidential candidate lies so often and thus far unapologetically, we have to call him out on it … normally, that’s what our `free press` would be doing, but they’re either slacking off, are playing favorites or are just bought and paid for by their corporate masters — take your pick … this country’s going to hell in a handbasket, and I’m having a hard time figuring a way to stop the downward spiral …

  • joebloe

    says:

    To the MacFans out there:
    You seem to be following the McCain political tactic. Whenever you have nothing positive to contribute to the discussion you resort to name calling. Like McCain is smacks of desperation, low-intellect, and being a bully. This is all so 3rd grade, stuff my daughter’s classmates engage in. When you can come to this battle of wits armed, let us know.