McCain is still adjusting to the ‘new rules’ in which people scrutinize his words

June 16, 2008

A week ago, Newsweek asked John McCain about remarks he made during his infamous, widely-panned “lime Jell-O” speech near New Orleans, in which he criticized the media for not having been fair enough to Hillary Clinton. When Newsweek brought it up, McCain immediately denied it, “I did not [say that] — that was in prepared remarks, and I did not [say it] — I’m not in the business of commenting on the press and their coverage or not coverage.”

The problem, of course, was that McCain was confused. His media criticism was in his prepared remarks and McCain read the words out loud. We’d all just heard his speech, and it was kind of disturbing to hear McCain deny having said what we all knew he’d just told a national audience. The emphatic denial suggested McCain had no idea what was in his own speech.

The incident wasn’t too big a deal, but it raised questions about McCain’s honesty, memory, and state of mind. Discussing the incident the other day on “Countdown,” there was an interesting exchange between Keith Olbermann and Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter. Alter said:

“Strangled by the videotape…. It’s a time warp thing. When he last ran for president in 2000, you could deny having said something, and the chances of you being caught, if it wasn’t something really serious, which this isn’t, were minimal, because nobody had access to the tapes. The tapes were in the vaults of networks. […]

“So, we assume that YouTube has been here and that all of this has been retrievable forever. It’s only been retrievable for like two years. So, the idea of being able to hold these politicians accountable for what they have actually said is in a new dimension now that makes it much, much tougher for these guys to B.S. […]

“I don’t think he’s senile. I think that he is caught in an old politics, where politicians routinely just said, black is white, and white is black, and blue is gray. And they got away with it for many, many years…. McCain just can’t get away with this kind of thing anymore in the new era, in the YouTube era. And it’s a learning curve for him to get up to speed to recognize that he’s living with new rules.”

I think this largely right. It’s an odd defense for McCain’s casual relationship with the truth, but it’s probably a reasonable enough explanation of why he keeps saying things that demonstrably false.

It is, of course, kind of jarring to hear major media figures excuse McCain’s falsehoods this way. As BarbinMD put it:

For years the traditional media has peddled the McCain-is-a-straight-talker narrative, and now that YouTube is biting him in the ass on a regular basis, we’re told that he just needs to “get up to speed, to recognize he’s living with new rules.” In other words, John McCain needs to learn not to lie.

Quite right. It’s not so much that McCain wants to intentionally deceive people — though he does, occasionally, do just that — but rather, McCain just isn’t accustomed to caring about details. He came of age in a time when political leaders could just say whatever came to mind. Telling stories, sharing anecdotes, relaying experiences — McCain likes to make a point, but he doesn’t like to worry about pesky particulars like facts. He can flub details here or there with impunity. Who’s going to know?

Well, under the “new rules,” everyone is going to know. McCain doesn’t know what Google is, and what’s worse, he doesn’t know that the rest of us do know what Google is.

It helps explain why McCain is constantly committing gaffes — he’s just not accustomed to caring about facts. Worse, it’s a little late in the game to teach a septuagenarian presidential candidate to change.

This doesn’t explain (at least to me) why there isn’t more pushback from the interviewers who presumably ask their questions based on a belief that they know what Hon. Sen. McCain has done or said. If the Senator tries to pull a denial like this, why would the reporter just leave it at that? does he suddenly believe that he might have been wrong?

  • It’s a wonder the GOP hasn’t tried to pass legislation to shut down the Internet completely.

    What makes this triply amusing is the GOP should have been aware of the power of the internons AT LEAST since Allen’s Macaca Moment. Foley’s IMs should have been another hint that what goes in there stays in there. Forever. I assume McCain was aware of and understood both of these events, but he still goes to automatic denial when confronted with indisputable facts.

    Fine, it just makes him look dishonest and crazy.

  • He is a liar. That, when caught, he lies about lying illustrates the first comment to the nth degree.
    Be ready for the MSM to soft peddle it the way Alter tried to. What has to happen is that people like Olberman have to add the follow-up question to these pundits: “Careful of what he’s saying or careful that what he’s saying is a lie once he’s caught?”

  • If this is McCain’s excuse, it’s a piss-poor one. My parents taught me right from wrong, and lying is wrong.

    Maybe McCain has flip-flopped on whether lying is wrong. It’s so hard to tell.

  • While it’s true that these sort of transparent denials get refuted by YouTube, the number of voters (and, more to the point, the number of McCain voters) who watch online videos is a miniscule part of the electorate. Lying transparently still works fine to shut down an uncomfortable line of questioning, since US MSM interviewers (unlike, say, some of those in the UK) never press the issue with followups.

    Eventually this may tatter the “straight talk” narrative a bit, but McCain has shown great flexibility when it comes to campaign tactics, being willing to reverse any previous position, or embrace bitter enemies (Bush, Falwell) if doing so will aid his interests. Dumping the maverick label when it no longer serves would fit the pattern just fine.

  • the number of voters (and, more to the point, the number of McCain voters) who watch online videos is a miniscule part of the electorate.

    True. But political reporters watch this stuff — especially when we bombard them with it — and puncturing their mistaken belief that McCain is a straight-talkin’ maverick goes a long way to changing the narrative about him. Trickle-down politics, if you will.

  • Polite American society sadly dictates, none call him a liar. Being called a liar in our tradition means a fist fight will no doubt break out. It is tacitly understood that people can identify liars to their loved ones and other friends so such a person can be accommodated within the normal context of the community. Further, Alter’s observation carries such a weight, as he accommodates the lies with a view of how they are perpetrated while never calling the honorable senator a liar. It is up to the viewer to pass along such a conclusion quietly so polite society can continue its traditional observances. -Kevo

  • This is one of the most fascinating aspects of this election cycle, and what sharply separates the old campaigning techniques from the new. Not to rehash the primaries, but it became very obvious that Bill Clinton was also suffering from a campaigning time warp in which he proceeded under the assumption that what he did was fully deniable later. Time and again he made statements and seemed surprised when vids surfaced showing him having said the exact opposite in the past. In one instance, he vehemently denied saying something he’d uttered the day before on a small-market radio station. Huh?

  • I don’t think he’s senile.

    No of course not.
    And I agree with the thrust of this post.

    But still, does anybody know a septuagenarian who isn’t memory impaired?

    Bottom line: His data registers have lost some of their ferromagnetic powers; and gramps can’t be seen schlepping around a list of reminders like the more savvy 70 year olds amongst us…

    He is going to be making a ton of unforced errors in the months ahead.

  • Let me clarify my above point @4. I was taught that lying is wrong, even if you don’t (or don’t think you can) get caught.

  • The networks never did mind pulling the tapes out of the vaults to catch Democrats. “Look for the Union Label,” anyone? I’m sure Republicans will find a way to make YouTube into TheirTube soon enough.

  • “Macaca” is macaque, a small monkey that is the “most widely distributed genus of nonhuman primates”. The rhesus macaque is the rhesus monkey of laboratory fame. Allen thought he was being cute by picking a word that he didn’t think the press would know. That estimate was correct, at least for a while.

  • I’m not sure Alter was really defending McCain. Indeed, in the current political environment, saying “he is caught in an old politics” may be every bit as damning as saying McCain is a liar or is senile — perhaps moreso. Alter is actually calling attention both to McCain’s age and his approach to politics. Dole ’96 showed the hazards of the former, Clinton ’08 the hazards of the latter. If this was meant to be a friendly defense, McCain really doesn’t need enemies.

    I’m not complaining, mind you. . .

  • Up until two years ago a politician could say anything and the press was powerless to verify it??

    I’ll give Tim Russert this much: his “gotcha” interview style demanded intensive background research. Of course, he was never interested in the consequences of an inconsistency, only whether he could force someone to commit one.

  • Do we really expect him to know what Google is? McCain admits that he doesn’t use a computer, how would he have any clue about things like Google and YouTube?

  • It seems that McCain keeps getting confused over whether it’s him or his wife who is supposed to be having difficulties with short-term memory.

  • I can understand McCain’s inability to grok the new paradigm (and to a lesser degree Clinton), but the press should be more on the ball here. They seem to miss most of the BS most of the time, and then after the left wing blogs have been all over it they finally get with the program and tell the uninformed American public about the BS they should have spotted a lot sooner (if they ever do it).

    My dream is that one of the stronger liberal bloggers will be brought into the management of a news bureau, and once that happens the entire MSM BSmobile will explode.

  • Having access to past statements and pointing out the BS is great, but there’s also the danger of escalating the gotcha game. In an effort to reveal the truth, we end up creating another distraction. Not all gaffes and flip-flops are substantial enough to get outraged about — not to mention that if you’re outraged all the time chances are you’re not thinking very clearly. Just a general thought, related to nothing specific and no one in particular.

  • It seems to me it began with Reagan. He would lie, and everyone knew it, but the MSM, already feeing the pressure of the extreme right wing, would down-play it. It came to all time heights with Bush II but now that there are online outlets to confront it, it’s not as easy any more.

  • How much of McCain’s memory trouble is related to the Botox injections Cindy has no doubt talked him into? The creepy smile just seems to be a little creepier lately.

  • Jonathon Alter: “The tapes were in the vaults of networks.”

    This is a perfect example of how poor a job the traditional media has and continues to do. Why are such tapes kept in the vaults?

    For me, one of the most fundamental jobs of the media is to act as a fact-checker. If viewers have the facts, most are intelligent enough to follow them to their obvious conclusions–usually leading them to take progressive positions.

  • jhm (#1) is right: Why no real pushback from the media? I like Alter a lot; he’s often ahead of the curve and not reluctant to break from the pack and offer his opinion before it becomes the chosen narrative of the day or week. So I was stunned with his kindly tolerance for McCain’s struggle in learning to tell the truth in the Olbermann segment. McCain is not just some old guy, rewriting history to pass the time; he’s angling for the job that will affect the entire planet. He must be held responsible. Some of the MSM is just lazy, and goes with the narrative du jour because they aren’t smart enough to do otherwise. But all of them? It makes you wonder, for example, if McC is like Hoover, with private files on everybody in DC. Why would people — who really do have fun breaking news — bury story after story of McC’s reprehensible behavior and endless flipflops, slips, and revisions that suggest either Olympic mendacity, encroaching senility (if this, I’m sorry, but that’s no reason to make him president), or real stupidity. This is not a rhetorical question; if anybody has any thoughts, please share. (I do not think it is ALL corporate media ownership.)

  • SF at # 24 said:
    “…I do not think it is ALL corporate media ownership.”

    All is such an absolute word. How about 95%?

    There are times when a statement is made that is so outrageous that it stuns the listeners. Winess Tom Delay’s statement that in the 60s he couldn’t serve in the military because the minorities had taken all the available slots. A flat out denial of fact that have been recorded might do this to the reporters. By the time they recover their editors & owners (who love Sen. Straight-Talk) are there to stifle any urge to counter the accepted narrative.

  • The problem, of course, was that McCain was confused.

    Confused? You won’t be, after tonight’s edition of “John McCain”.

  • Why does no-one in the MSM call McCain’t on his appalling lies? Same reason MSM anchors and reporters (who are now just starting to admit it) were pressured by their bosses to cheerlead for Bush’s war: the MSM are all major corporations now, who have a huge vested interest in the government staying in Republican hands. If the Democrats win, they reason, their huge empires might be regulated and even whittled down, and their taxes will go up. That’s why a “terrorist fist jab” gets more air time than the SCOTUS habeas corpus decision.

    The worst act of Bill Clinton’s presidency wasn’t a blow job — it was removing the fin/syn rules that kept media companies smaller and more independent. It dealt what I believe will eventually be a death blow to our democracy by destroying any semblance of a free and independent press. And the Internet may not be enough to save us. If McCain wins in November, it will be because (and only because) the heavy thumbs of GE, NewsCorp, Viacom and Disney were pressed on the electoral scale to aid Republicans. In a free and fair election, where both sides were getting fair and equal coverage, Obama would win in a landslide.

  • OK, re #s 25 and 27, corporate media ownership it probably is, or certainly mostly is, and it breaks this democratic (small d) heart. The miracle then is that there are still people — on blogs, on some broadcasts, in some newschains (McClatchy comes to mind) asking real questions and fighting the good fight, and that we still have the First Amendment. So far. Anyway, thanks.

  • If the Senator tries to pull a denial like this, why would the reporter just leave it at that? does he suddenly believe that he might have been wrong? — jhm, @1

    It might be that the reporters interviewing him simply cannot wrap their minds around the possibility that McCain could deny something which can be so easily disproved. So, they don’t arm themselves with the rebuttal clips. Especially when the matter is something as trivial as what he’d said/didn’t say about the role of the press.

  • ATX Dem said:
    “For the love of Christ why are people still supporting this candidate?”
    I agree. From what is known today, and has been known for months, if not years, how did this person reach this level of political stature?

    There is such fear in this country that the truth frightens people who see their fortunes and security tied to the way it is(or they think it is). The appearance is that this country and its industry is so beholden to military/security enterprises that to move in another direction could be fatal. Even the “underclasses” cannot get past this illusion of instability that could come from a shift in direction. More prisons and fewer schools…more weapons of mass destruction whose targets are non-existent…a healthcare system that underserves the majority of “Americans”…a crumbling infrastructure that is hiding in the shadows of awareness…jobs leaving the country and those displaced workers still clinging to the possibility that they may return…changing weather patterns that obvious, but marginalized as “natural”. This list goes on….Until we are willing to apply radical logic and critical thinking to our circumstances, the decline will continue and we will wake up one morning, living the nightmare that we thought was only a dream.

    I am committed to Oneness through Justice and Transformation.
    peace,
    st john

  • You know, given the state of the technology, I think that if I were a reporter planning on asking McCain about a comment he’d made, I’d have burned a DVD of the footage, and have a portable DVD player loaded in my pocket. When the good Senator comes out with one of his “I never said that” answers, I could follow up with, “Uh, Senator, I have it right here. Watch!” The YouTube thing is all very nice, but why not have real-time accountability?

    But then, I’m obviously to concerned with things like objective reality to make a modern reporter…

  • kind of disturbing to hear McCain deny having said what we all knew he’d just told a national audience.

    Isn’t that being too generous towards McCain? A national audience… That would apply to Obama who gave a speech on the same day. McCain: Not so much.

    I doubt that 1% of the population was tuned in to listen to McCain. I guess it all depends on what you consider to be ‘national’ audience.

    🙂

  • It could be a little of both. Maybe he just doesn’t remember some of what he said the day before.
    I really can’t believe that he’s not only computer illiterate but that he doesn’t have the intellectual curiosity to learn. We’ve had 7 years of this. I’m afraid we may not survive 4 more. He is laying the ground work for his own presidential demise. The world today moves a million miles per minute and he’s just not going to cut it. Just as in 1960, America will be far better served with a young president. It took a young JFK to have the vision to go into space and try to heal the wounds of racism. We need a president who is at the peak of his life. Not winding down

  • I’ve often said I always tell the truth because remembering which lies you’ve told to whom is more effort than I want to invest.

    REAL straight talkers have it made.

    McCain might consider actually rising to his ill-deserved reputation.
    At 72, I bet my memory is better than his.

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