Given the excitement of the prolonged Democratic presidential race, John McCain hasn’t had a whole lot to do the past couple of months. Sure, he’s raised some money and launched the occasional attack, but in general, McCain has been pushed to the side, just to the right of the national spotlight.
The problem, though, is that McCain didn’t use this time to brush up on policy issues or his own voting record. Indeed, he’s gotten more than a little rusty. Last week, McCain didn’t know how many U.S. troops are in Iraq. This week, while campaigning in Louisiana, he had no idea about his own voting record on the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.
For those who can’t watch video clips online, a reporter in New Orleans asked McCain why he “voted twice against the creation of a commission to investigate the levee failures in New Orleans.” McCain responded, “I’ve supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy,” though he ultimately conceded to the reporter, “I’m not familiar with exactly what you said.” (McCain also boasted about the meetings he’s had with people “on the ground” in New Orleans, despite having only visited the city once in the nearly three years since the hurricane devastated the city.)
Before he campaigned in New Orleans, McCain probably should have taken a moment to review his record on Katrina, because what he said is completely wrong.
Far from supporting “every investigation,” McCain has actually done the opposite. Hillary Clinton sponsored Senate measures in 2005 and 2006 to establish a congressional commission to examine the federal, state, and local response to the hurricane. McCain voted against the Clinton measure both times.
As the Obama campaign put it, “Whether he simply wasn’t aware of his voting record again or he was intentionally misleading the people of Louisiana, John McCain certainly isn’t offering us ‘leadership you can believe in.'”
The McCain campaign responded, “It doesn’t bode well for Senator Obama’s pledges to run a campaign of hope and change when on the first day of the general election he’s launching the same tired negative attacks that the American people are so sick and tired of.”
I see. So, if McCain is asked about his record, and tells people the opposite of the truth, the appropriate “hopeful” response is to say nothing. Got it.
Yglesias added:
Now there’s probably some crazy strained reading of McCain’s remarks so that his claims are consistent with reality. And since everyone knows McCain’s a straight-talker, the press will read it that way. And because that’s been the press’s response each of the dozens of times in the course of this campaign that McCain’s told bald-faced lies, his reputation for straight-talk never vanishes. A lesser figure who was in the habit of constantly lying and flip-flopping would develop a reputation as a kind of madmen, so invested in self-love that he thinks he has no obligation to political principles or basic factual accuracy.
To be sure, I don’t want to make too much of McCain’s demonstrably false Katrina claims. Maybe he forgot his record. Maybe he was briefed on the way to New Orleans, but forgot what his staffers told him. Maybe he wants to debate verb tenses again, and meant to say he will someday “support every investigation” into what happened after the storm, making attention over his mistake “nitpicky.”
The point, however, is that there seems to be something of a pattern here. McCain keeps saying things that are false, either as a result of ignorance, malice, or both. He got away with a lot of this when the Clinton-Obama show was the political world’s top attraction. McCain may want to start getting his act together now.