{"id":16584,"date":"2008-08-14T09:40:30","date_gmt":"2008-08-14T13:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16550.html"},"modified":"2008-08-14T09:40:30","modified_gmt":"2008-08-14T13:40:30","slug":"klein-points-to-evidence-of-a-severe-character-defect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/klein-points-to-evidence-of-a-severe-character-defect\/","title":{"rendered":"Klein points to ‘evidence of a severe character defect’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, we talked<\/a> about John McCain losing the NYT’s Thomas Friedman, thanks to a series of utterly ridiculous energy-policy proposals. Today, let’s look at John McCain losing Time’s Joe Klein.<\/p>\n

I’ve teased Klein a bit for misjudging McCain. After all, as recently as April, Klein predicted<\/a> that McCain would avoid the cheap and pathetic style of campaigning we’re seeing now. McCain, Klein said, “sees the tawdry ceremonies of politics — the spin and hucksterism — as unworthy.” If he doesn’t, “McCain will have to live with the knowledge that in the most important business of his life, he chose expediency over honor. That’s probably not the way he wants to be remembered.”<\/p>\n

Klein has come a long way since then. Noting McCain’s reluctance to condemn Jerome Corsi’s hatchet-job, and McCain’s support for Joe Lieberman’s smear this week, Klein doesn’t seem to recognize McCain anymore<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I know that people like me are supposed to try to be fair…and balanced. (The Fox mockery of our sappy professional standards seems more brutally appropriate with each passing year.) In the past, I would achieve a semblance — or an illusion — of balance by criticizing Democrats for not responding effectively when right-wing sludge merchants poisoned our national elections with their filth and lies. And it is true, as John Kerry knows, that a more effective response — and a bolder campaign — might have neutralized the Swiftboat assault four years ago. It is also true that Corsi’s book this time is far less effective than his Swiftboat venture, since it doesn’t come equipped with veterans willing to defile their service by telling lies to camera.<\/p>\n

But there is no excuse for what the McCain campaign is doing on the “putting America first” front. There is no way to balance it, or explain it other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used. There is a straight up argument to be had in this election: Mcain has a vastly different view from Obama about foreign policy, taxation, health care, government action…you name it. He has lots of experience; it is always shocking to remember that this time four years ago, Barack Obama was still in the Illinois State Legislature. <\/p>\n

Apparently, though, McCain isn’t confident that conservative policies and personal experience can win, given the ruinous state of the nation after eight years of Bush. So he has made a fateful decision: he has personally impugned Obama’s patriotism and allows his surrogates to continue to do that. By doing so <\/p>\n

koupit-pilulky.com<\/a><\/p>\n

, he has allied himself with those who smeared him, his wife, his daughter Bridget, in 2000. Those tactics won George Bush a primary–and a nomination. But they proved a form of slow-acting spiritual poison, rotting the core of the Bush presidency. We’ll see if the public decides to acquiesce in sleaze in 2008, and what sort of presidency–what sort of country–that will produce.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One gets the distinct impression that Klein isn’t mad at McCain, he’s disappointed<\/i> in him.
\n
\nAnd like Friedman yesterday, it’s worth noting that there seems to have been an evolution in Klein’s thinking. He spent much of the campaign defending McCain’s integrity, and giving McCain the benefit of the doubt, up until it reached the point at which this was no longer possible.<\/p>\n

It was evident a few weeks ago, after McCain said Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.” Klein responded<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This is the ninth presidential campaign I’ve covered. I can’t remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which was followed soon after by this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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, but now I’m beginning to think his Senate colleagues may be right about his temperament.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which was followed by another item soon after on the inanity of McCain’s attacks against Barack Obama. Klein’s headline read, “The Scum Also Rises<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Everything I said yesterday about Friedman applies equally well to Joe Klein — it\u2019s hard to gauge the size of the Klein voting bloc; I suspect it\u2019s fairly small. That said, Klein is very influential in the political media and DC establishment, and his obvious disappointment with McCain\u2019s scurrilous tactics may help drive home a simple truth: the presumptive Republican nominee will say or do anything to win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, we talked about John McCain losing the NYT’s Thomas Friedman, thanks to a series of utterly ridiculous energy-policy proposals. Today, let’s look at John McCain losing Time’s Joe Klein. I’ve teased Klein a bit for misjudging McCain. After all, as recently as April, Klein predicted that McCain would avoid the cheap and pathetic style […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}