McCain falsely accuses Obama of having ‘changed his mind’ on Iraq

July 7, 2008

E. J. Dionne Jr. had a column in September 2004 that’s always stuck with me. He noted, in the midst of the presidential campaign, that Republicans are not above lying, but Dems seem to be squeamish about it. “A very intelligent political reporter I know said the other night that Republicans simply run better campaigns than Democrats,” Dionne noted. “If I were given a free pass to stretch the truth to the breaking point, I could run a pretty good campaign, too.”

I’ve been thinking about that column a lot lately, as the McCain campaign’s willingness to abandon any pretense of honesty has become more obvious. Elevating Karl Rove’s former aides to running McCain’s operation seems to have intensified the mendacity.

Greg Sargent noted a whopper from this morning.

The McCain campaign continues to push an outright falsehood: That Obama flip-flopped on Iraq.

On a conference call with reporters a few moments ago, a senior McCain surrogate, Steve Forbes, recited a litany of things that Obama has supposedly flip-flopped on, and said that Obama had “changed his mind” on troop withdrawals from Iraq.

This, obviously, is patently and demonstrably false. But it wasn’t an accident or a casual slip-up by a campaign surrogate. On Thursday, the McCain campaign issued a statement insisting that Obama has “now adopted John McCain’s position” on troop withdrawal from Iraq, and has come around to “accepting John McCain’s principled stand on this critical national security issue.” Yesterday, Joe Lieberman, McCain’s top surrogate, made a similar argument on national television.

Now, I know the McCain campaign is not made up of idiots. They heard Obama’s easy-to-understand comments, and they understood the remarks just as well as we did. Given their familiarity with the English language, they surely understand that Obama hasn’t “changed his mind” or “adopted John McCain’s position” on troop withdrawal.

But they’re lying anyway, because as Dionne noted four years ago, it’s what Republican campaigns do, it’s how Republican campaigns succeed, and it’s how Republican campaigns operate given the assumption that reporters won’t call them on it.

Given this, it’s worth taking a moment to consider why the McCain campaign is lying as blatantly as they are. Even under the most optimistic of scenarios, there’s at least a risk that a campaign will face some consequences for obvious distortions, so why would the McCain campaign push its luck?

For a couple of reasons. First, as we saw last week, McCain’s aides saw first-hand just how farcical campaign reporting has become. If McCain says Obama has changed positions, news outlets will repeat the claim, ad nauseum, despite the claim being false. It’s a dynamic that encourages campaigns to repeat more falsehoods, given that there’s no real accountability. In other words, if one can lie with impunity, and benefit, he or she will lie all the time.

Second, as Josh Marshall explained over the weekend, McCain is facing the inconvenient reality of running on a very unpopular agenda with regards to Iraq. It’s in the campaign’s interest, then, to change the nature of the debate away from the candidate’s misguided worldview.

The Iraq War is very unpopular. The majority of the country believes it was a mistake to have invaded in the first place. And the great majority want to get all of our troops out of Iraq in the near future. These are facts amply supported by what is now years of public opinion data. While it is true that the reduction in violence over the last 8-9 months has led to some shift in how people think ‘things are going’ in Iraq, it has had no measurable effect on the key questions: should we be there in the first place (no) and should we leave now (yes.)

This is the only backdrop against which to understand the current jousting over the semantics of the Iraq debate.

We have two candidates with starkly different positions. Barack Obama is for an orderly and considered withdrawal of all US combat forces in Iraq, a process he says he will begin immediately upon taking office. John McCain supports a permanent garrisoning of US troops on military bases in Iraq — a long-term ‘presence’ which he hopes will require a constantly-diminishing amount of actual combat and thus an ever-diminishing toll in American lives.

This is, I believe, a fair and even generous description of each candidate’s essential position. And the recital makes the key point clear: McCain’s position is squarely on the wrong side of public opinion — in fact, to an overwhelming degree.

Given this, what’s a candidate to do? Option A is changing his/her position to one that makes sense. Option B is lying about his/her rival’s position, arguing that the rival now agrees with the struggling candidate, as part of an elaborate strategy of shifting focus away from the candidate’s unpopular ideas. Guess which option McCain prefers?

So, the McCain campaign has decided to deliberately lie, a lot, and hope for the best. Under the circumstances, they seem to believe they have no choice.

No one wants to talk about McCain’s policies. Especially McCain.

  • I am starting with the assumption that the vast majority of mainstrem media reporters are ethical professionals. But these reporters (like all of us) come with a view of the world and report stories in ways that fit their view of the world. Of course their view of the world may be shaped by bias, not necessarily an overt partisan bias, but a more subtle bias developed through their own exposure to the world. That means that they are victims, and through their own reporting, victimizers, of an instituionally slanted perception of the world, the characters in that world and “rules” by which their world works. I can understand this in the abstract, what I don’t understand is the world view in which they operate. What exactly is this view?

  • I can understand this in the abstract, what I don’t understand is the world view in which they operate. What exactly is this view?

    Whatever the RNC tells them it should be. Haven’t you been paying attention?

  • But they’re lying anyway, because as Dionne noted four years ago, it’s what Republican campaigns do, it’s how Republican campaigns succeed, and it’s how Republican campaigns operate given the assumption that reporters won’t call them on it.

    Why? Because it works, thereby proving the assumption correct.

  • I don’t know if I can handle another election where we bitch constantly about how unfair the media is right up until we lose in November. There has to be some way, outside of shooting reporters, to inject some truth into the discourse……right?

  • Yes, Elbows, there has to be. And I think it’s a matter of frank truth-telling rather than frankness. Obama is a candidate who seems capable of saying, “This report is a lie. This is what I said.” We should not underestimate the potential, when we have a charismatic candidate on our hands, for simple, unapologetic declarations against bullshit. It is a quality that was, in fact, once part of John McCain’s “brand.”

    Sadly, Obama muffed this opportunity with the Wesley Clark fiasco, when he declared his opposition to something Wesley Clark never actually said. It is not a promising sign.

  • The newest (of many flawed) strategies is to paint Obama as a flip-flopper. Isn’t it time for Benen to march out his McCain flip-flopping list? McCain does have a gigantic new one, after all. First he was going to balance the budget by 2013, then he dropped that completely. But now suddenly he’s going to balance it in his first TERM (neverminding the impossibility of doing so, with all the tax cuts and spending promises he’s already made).

  • I still get the feeling a lot of us don’t quite get the whole Bizarro-world of Conservative Wisdom in DC. Kerry didn’t change his position either, really. You see his explanation for why he voted for the resolution, and it was word for word what he said in the campaign. It doesn’t matter. Democrats change their mind, period. It doesn’t matter if they change their minds, they still do because their Democrats. Republicans understand the real world and make the tough choices that need to be made behind the scenes. We can not be trusted to understand what the papa bears are doing, so they protect us from it for our own good. Republicans don’t waffle, even when they do.

    It is simply impossible for many in the Reality-Based community to figure out how one thinks non-empirically. It’s what leads one to the mistake belief that having a radical left-wing pastor necessitates that one no longer see Obama as Muslim, when the fact is Obama is a Muslim with a radical Christian pastor because both memes, if believed, fit the GOP narrative. There’s no contradiction at all when one believes what pushes our agenda rather than what the facts support.

    This is what Obama demonstrates to not understand when he denounces Clark. Wesley Clark should not withdraw or apologize for something he did not say. Obama should not distance himself from what Clark did not say because the fact is that anything Democrats say that in any way smacks of running a campaign against rather than for McCain will create a DC-wide hissy-fit. One can either dance on their cue, or run a campaign that makes our narratives rather than reinforces theirs. The MSM can hyperventilate all they want, the days of campaigning for the opposition are over.

  • One possible thing that could work to change this narrative is to call this lying what it really is – an act of cowardice. John McCain and the Republicans are cowards. They are afraid to to be tied to the current POTUS. They are afraid to tell the public what they really believe. They are all f*#%ing cowards!

  • The Republican lie machine squeezed out another piece of talking point the other day:

    [paraphrasing:]”McCain supported the surge, which worked, and we are winning. Obama was against the surge, but now that we are winning, he is in a box/bind.

    P.S. If you use “box” in one sentence, use “bind” in the next. Thanks – RNC.”

    These are easy lies for Obama to knock down – I am surprised not enough surrogates are tearing these apart.

  • In 2000, GWB criticized Clinton for “nation building.” He then went on to embark on the biggest nation building project we’ve ever undertaken. He promised to bring down the national debt by $2 trillion over 10 years in his first SOTU address, but instead added trillions. But he framed the issue in 2004 as Kerry being a flip flopper, and the media dutifully spent the entire campaign arguing whether the claim was true or not.

    This is what Jon Stewart was talking about in his famous appearance on CNN with Tucker Carlson, how they’d let one side tell a lie and then bring in two people to debated either side of the point as if it were a legitimate issue.

    The claim Kerry shot an unarmed fleeing pajama-clad teenager in the back was totally disproven by accounts from other service members on his same patrol, but the story got debated and the idea planted in the public mind nevertheless. The “Obama is a Muslim” story is the same type of approach.

    McCain’s borrowing Bush’s biggest strategy, though, which is to loudly accuse your opponent of being a flip flopper when the opponent has nowhere near the record of flip flopping than the accuser has.

    Even if the public concludes “hell, they’re both flip floppers, everyone does it” it innoculates McCain to some extent from his total change on almost every major issue.

    In fact, that would be an interesting contest. Can you think of even one issue where McCain has not changed position?

  • If Obama wants to put an end to these attacks on his foreign policy stance, he needs to distance himself from Wesley Clark for criticizing McCain’s foreign policy.

  • it’s how Republican campaigns operate given the assumption that reporters won’t call them on it.

    Obviously, the reporters won’t. Even in the rare instances when the corporate media takes on the role of fact-checkers, they get their own facts wrong.

    I’m becoming more and more convinced that we don’t get to have a say in in who wins the election. The media won’t have it.

  • You know what Dems never seem to do when shit like this happens?

    It’s the most obvious counter-strategy and one that might get them a lot of attention since it is rarely done. It’s a pretty obvious talking point and it would really ruffle the GOP’s feathers.

    Dems need to start calling whomever is saying such things A LIAR. Dems need to say it’s simply not true, say that they are making stuff up just to see what sticks. None of this “misspeaking” bullshit, when the GOP lies they need to be called out as untrustworthy LIARS. It’s a strong word and is rarely used. If the Dems could put the GOP in a position to defend themselves over lying then things could get really interesting.

  • A speech for Obama:
    “Several of my opponent’s surrogates have claimed, this past week, that my position and Sen. McCain’s on the Iraq War have become the same. Since my position has been consistent throughout the campaign — that troops would be withdrawn within 16 months, but that specific details of the withdrawal might need minor ‘tweaking’ to ensure the safety of the troops — this must mean that the Senator’s position has changed to match mine. If this is so, then let me be the first to welcome Senator McCain’s new determination to end this unjest war and the needless waste of American lives and resources that it has cost. Perhaps the two of us could introduce a bill, even in this Congress, that would provide for this withdrawal.”

  • Have the Republicans gone to school on lying? They have the art down solidly and uniformly. Once the lie is set, it is repeated consistently and without variation. If anyone questions them on the facts, they know which red herring to use to throw the question back on to their target instead of having any doubt stick to themselves or whomever they are defending. The patterns are obviously evident for anyone who pays any attention and questions every word they say.

    This is a serious question. How did the Republicans get so damned good at lying? I guess practice makes perfect.

  • The reason the McCain campaign is accusing Obama of flip flopping on several issues is because McCain has flip flopped on so many issues, and the McCain campaign wants the media to mention Obama “flip flops” every time they mention a McCain flip flop. By putting together a questionable list of Obama flip flops, the McCain assures that the media will dutifully report an Obama flip flop every time they mention a McCain flip flop. I think the McCain campaign fears a powerful prime time speech at the Democratic convention highlighting McCain’s flip flops. I’d love to see Hillary Clinton deliver that speech.

  • This is exactly what galled me about Joe LIEberman on Sunday (Tennis was on so I couldn’t watch Chris Matthews instead of the first half of George S.).

    The Republican’ts and Joe LIEberman have been complaining and complaining that Obama hasn’t been to Iraq and hasn’t ‘seen’ the effect of the surge, which would/should change his policy on Iraq. Now they are complaining and complaining that Obama has changed his policy on Iraq.

    What the F**K doe Joe LIEberman and JSMcC*n’t want?

    Oh, ya. To win by lying like the f**king cowards they are.

    What make me really laugh is how they claim JSMcC*n’t has been so consistent on Iraq. He was bolding telling the President in 2003 that we didn’t have enough troops and it’s it wonderful how the Surge has proven him right?

    Except:
    Erik Sinseki said we’d need more troops in 2002, and you didn’t here JSMcC*n’t standing up for the guy when Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld ruined his career,
    If JSMcC*n’t said in 2003 that we needed more troops, why didn’t the Bushites listen until 2007 after they lost the 2006 election? Wasn’t JSMcC*n’t IMPORTANT?
    If JSMcC*n’t thinks we need more troops, why hasn’t he supported the DRAFT?

    Really, let’s just start slamming the boy back. He’s been ignored by his own party because he has NO influence, he was late to the party and what has he done to actually make a sustained troop increase possible.

    JSMcC*n’t, wrong on every count.

  • I’d like to see Obama come out swinging on this one, with a “which word doesn’t John McCain understand” speech.

  • I like it Prup.

    I’ve believed for a while that Joe LIEberman will up and say one day: “Time to Leave”. No explanation of why it wasn’t time yesterday, or why the last 1000 Americans and 10,000 Iraqis had to die. Nope.

    We are waiting on Joe to decide, and he’ll tell JSMcC*n’t.

  • Apologies for my above post and crazy math. 2013 *is* the end of the first term. So McCain simply flip-flopped back to his original position.

  • I want Obama and surrogates to start calling “bullshit” with gusto on the talking head shows.

    “Did you read or hear Obama’s stated position on Iraq yourself? Yes? It is patently different from John McCain’s. To say that they are the same makes you a liar or a fool. Which one are you?”

    “Mr./Ms. Moderator – do you think that [the right-wing talking point] is valid based on the evidence? What would you consider your role as a Modreator to be when someone steps beyond opinion and states demonstrable falsehoods as though they were facts?”

    If they whine about being called a liar/fool, then the disputed matter will be held up and the media will be pressured (perhaps not forced) to actually evaluate the talking points for veracity.

    Or am I dreaming?

  • Prup (#17):

    I like it.

    In addition, I suggest the next time a reporter asks about Obama’s flip-flop on Iraq that Obama should ask the reporter, “Why do you think McCain is so desperate to equate our two positions on Iraq?”.

    Answer: Because McCain knows his position is a loser and the only way he can keep Obama from totally trouncing him in the election is to confuse the public, but he can only do that with a complicit media.

  • TomB (#2) asked: I can understand this in the abstract, what I don’t understand is the world view in which they operate. What exactly is this view?

    Once again, easy answers for easy questions.

    As George Orwell once pointed it, “it is difficult to get a man to admit a certain reality is true, if it is against his economic interest to do so.”

    The owners of the corporate media want a Repuiblican victory, to continue to policies that make them richer. In case no one has noticed, the MSM is downsizing (here in Los Angeles, Sam Zell, the real estate “genius” who bought the LA Times is axing 150 reporter positions by Labor Day to save money so he can finance the payment of the bad debts he used to buy the institution – the same thing is happening with his other property, the Chicago Tribune) So, if you’re a reporter who knows you are otherwise-unemployable, and there’s about to be a 30% cut in employment for reporters, and you work for a right wing Republican asshole – what’s a smart boy or girl to do??? Report the “news” that the boss wants to hear is what you do.

    Given the ups and downs at Associated Press, the same dynamic is going on there, as it is at every other part of the print media.

    See? Like I said, simple answers to simple questions.

  • horserace in wisconsin @ 10:

    There’s a certain righteous elegance in calling the GOP cowards cowards. I get it.

    But if the past few weeks have taught me anything, it’s that if you start trying to brand McCain a coward ecause of his cowardly poilitical strategy, the msm will act as if you’re questioning his war record (naturally), and instead of this being about McCain’s lies, it’s about how OBAMA never joined the military, never saw battle, never got thrown into a VC prison, never got tortured etc.

    So, forget it. In a perfect world, it would work. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t even have to use it. But to use it would
    cause more harm than good.

    Back on topic, I’d love to see Media Matters or a comparable site see how many members of the media are “double wrong.” In other words, when Obama first started discussing his policy for withdrawing from Iraq, some of the dopier element of the media started shouting “Obama’s a cut and runner! Obama’s a cut and runner! We can’t just up and leave! WE CAN’T JUST UP AND LEAVE!” And it didn’t matter that he never said he wanted the troops to just up & leave, the CW was that he DID say it, and the CW is never wrong right?

    NOW, Obama is saying the same thing about withdrawl from Iraq he’s always said, and the dopier elements of the media is now saying “WELLITY WELLITY WELL! Mr. Cut and Run Up and Leave is NOW saying he doesn’t know WHEN we’ll leave Iraq! Fliiiiiiip-floooooooop, fliiiiiip-floooop!”

    I really wouldn’t be too shocked if the people who got Obama’s proposed policy wrong before, are the same people getting it wrong the other way now.

  • Obama did flip flop on Iraq. When he was running for the senate a year after the war he said don’t bring any troops home and don’t set any deadlines. Then during the primaries his top foreign policy advisor said he would keep 80,000 troops in iraq. Then Obama said he would end the war but to veterans groups he says he will keep troops in iraq going after al queda, keep troops in iraq training al queda and keep them at the embassy. Go to youtube and type in Obama don’t bring the troops home from iraq and see the video.

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kFrFIFizkU

    Here is the correct link of Obama saying don’t bring the troops home when he was running for the senate.

    Obama makes the argument of why setting a withdrawal date is wrong.

    This is shocking video from Obama and shows he isn’t honest when he says he has always been against the war.

    Obama was for the war in 2004.

  • Obama is a candidate who seems capable of saying, “This report is a lie. This is what I said.” We should not underestimate the potential, when we have a charismatic candidate on our hands, for simple, unapologetic declarations against bullshit. It is a quality that was, in fact, once part of John McCain’s “brand.”

    But has he done this yet? I’m concerned (ugh, sorry to use that word) that he hasn’t been more forceful here. And in fact I’m just concerned that in the last 2 weeks he hasn’t been quite as tough as he had been for a few months there, hitting Hillary, McCain and Bush all at once at times. Any thoughts, anyone? (And don’t call me a concern troll — I’m serious here.)

    Even if the public concludes “hell, they’re both flip floppers, everyone does it” it innoculates McCain to some extent from his total change on almost every major issue.

    Exactly. It reduces the issue to a tie — which is all the GOP is trying for. A push, and then people say, “Well, hell, let’s go with the war-maverick-whatever guy.”

    But he framed the issue in 2004 as Kerry being a flip flopper, and the media dutifully spent the entire campaign arguing whether the claim was true or not.

    To be fair, Kerry really put his foot in it with the “I was for it before I was against it” remark. There’s just no way to walk that backward without sounding even more insecure. Obama didn’t do that. He stated a policy that has been his policy for a long time — and besides, who the hell wants absolutism? That’s what we’ve had under this jerk Bush for nearly 8 years now.

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