Two weeks before Cindy McCain swore to NBC's Ann Curry that her "husband is absolutely opposed to any negative campaigning at all," Commentary's Jennifer Rubin spoke to John McCain on a conference call and baited him into describing Barack Obama as --- simultaneously --- the stealth candidate of Hamas, the Sandinistas, and the Weather Underground. Obama responded yesterday on CNN, saying that McCain was "losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination."
How would the campaign Abe Greenwald assures us is the veritable Platonic form of
Senator Tamburlaine the Great: McCain's Potemkin stroll through a Baghdad market in April 2007 allowed terrorists to set up an ambush that killed 21 people...and provided his campaign with a fitting metaphor maturity and masculine wisdom react? Why, with a near-instantaneous hysterical shriek from senior aide Mark Salter, of course. Salter, who seems to have earned his seniority as the campaign's point-man on hysterical shrieking, wants to make it clear just how offensive was Obama's "not particularly clever way of raising John McCain's age as an issue" --- presumably at least slightly more offensive than when Salter called Arianna Huffington "a flake and a poser and an attention-seeking diva" for telling the truth about Salter's boss.
But Salter's real point is to make sure the journalists on his mass-mailing list clearly understand the difference between "legitimate" and illegitimate campaigning. For example, calling your opponent an enemy of the state is a totally "legitimate question...about his judgment and preparedness." However, for Obama to respond to that charge with the charitable interpretation that it's an example of the toll running for president can take on someone's mind (rather than, say, an asshole being true to his nature) is an illegitimate attempt "to delegitimize" the legitimate question of whether Obama is an enemy of the state.
Now, I confess that I can't quite see the conceptual distinction the McCain camp is trying to draw, but then, I didn't learn virtue from a segregationist who taught me to put aside any "reservations about my destiny" of dying an honorable death in battle and going to Valhalla, so I'll have to defer to the expert. Here goes:
| Legitimate | Illegitimate |
| Offering voters bribes in exchange for their vote and their commitment to pollute the environment | Being the sort of liberal in a "chauffeured limo" who turns down McCain's bribe |
| Holding up a bill providing education benefits to veterans because GIs might not sign up for new terms of duty if they have decent alternatives | Accurately describing what McCain was doing, as one decorated marine veteran did |
| Proposing to occupy Iraq for 100 years |
Quoting McCain saying that 100 years in Iraq are "fine" with him without appending the footnote that he's only fine with staying in Iraq if no Americans are dying there and the country has become like Germany or South Korea |
| Proposing to continue fighting in Iraq unconditionally at absolutely any cost in blood and treasure for as long as it takes (100, 1,000, 10,000 years, etc.) to transform the country into Germany on the Euphrates so that we can then preside over a peaceful 100 year occupation | Choosing to run 30 second ads quoting McCain's approval of a 100-year occupation rather than spending exponentially more money on ads demonstrating that the "100 years" line is even more revealing in its full context -- revealing, that is, of McCain's profound ignorance of the nature of the Iraqi conflict and callous willingness to send unlimited numbers of Americans to their death to satisfy his honor code |
| Proposing to occupy a completely pacified Iraq for 100 years utterly oblivious of what offering such a proposal in any context says about one's hold on reality |
Citing McCain's full quote about Iraq to demonstrate his total break with reality |
| Promoting the idea --- and apparently believing it --- that Germany and Korea provide useful optics through which to view Iraq | Explaining what McCain's belief that Germany and Korea can be informatively compared to Iraq says about his competence in foreign affairs |
| Planning to destroy the international system and instigate a new cold war for its character-building qualities |
Pointing out McCain's plan to destroy the international system and start a new cold war without also dwelling extensively on the free trade agreements he backs, or explicitly conceding that McCain does not in fact literally believe Russia is an arm of al-Qaeda |
| Claiming that Hamas endorsing your opponent calls into question his judgment and preparedness (see above) |
Observing that McCain proposes continuing the war in Iraq because, according to Osama bin Laden, it's "the central battleground in the battle against al Qaeda" |
| Claiming an ability to abhor war "as only a man who has experienced its horrors can do" after going more than a decade without encountering a foreign policy problem that shouldn't be solved by war | Noting the contradiction |
| Admitting to three separate newspaper editorial boards that you don't understand economics, then lying about having said so when asked |
Asking McCain if it's a problem for his campaign that the economy is the top issue for voters, given that, by his admission, he doesn't understand economics |
| Lying about having discussed legislative favors for her clients with lobbyist Vicky Iseman after admitting to it in a deposition | Asking McCain follow-up questions about said lies |
| Attacking your opponent for reneging on a pledge to accept public financing | Reminding McCain that he accepted public matching funds for the primary, thereby binding himself legally to the public finance system, then used certification of the public funds as collateral on a loan in possible violation of campaign finance law, then attempted to wriggle out of public financing and its spending limits despite being bound to them, then spent months effectively refusing to comply with the FEC and accepting the Bush administration's helping hand of sacking a FEC commissioner who was troublesome to McCain, and has flip-flopped at least four times on public financing since 2002. |
| Trying to bolster the credibility of your support for the Iraq war today by claiming to have been "the greatest critic of the initial four years" of the war who "knew it was probably going to be long and hard and tough," as opposed to those who "thought that somehow it was going to be some kind of an easy task" and therefore "didn’t know what they were voting for" | Noting that in September 2002, McCain proclaimed that "success [in Iraq] will be fairly easy" and denied that the war would involve "house-to-house fighting in Baghdad" or "a bloodletting of trading Iraqi bodies for American bodies"; that in January 2003 he predicted "we will win [the war] easily"; that he predicted in March 2003 that "the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators" and remained confident that "this conflict is going to be relatively short"; that he declared in April 2003 that "the end is very much in sight," perhaps because he also thought at the time that "Sunnis and Shiahs [sic]...can probably get along"; that in May 2003 he described the war as "a massive victory" that would allow us "to end aggression with minimum overall loss of life"; that in June 2003 he argued that there would not have been a "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln if the mission were not, in fact, accomplished; declared flatly in December 2003 that "this is a mission accomplished"; that he declared himself "confident" in March 2004 that "we're on the right course"; that he explained in October 2004 that "the initial phases of [the war] were so spectacularly successful that is took us all by surprise"; and that he remained sanguine in December 2005 that "we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course" for one more year |
| Smearing anyone who wants to end the disaster for which you bear direct personal responsibility as "raising the white flag of surrender" | Sanity |
So: Unfortunately I still don't get it. Maybe the McCain line between legitimacy and illegitimacy looks incredible to you, too, perhaps even evidence of a candidate having lost his bearings in pursuit of the presidency, but that just goes to show that you and I need to study the Episcopal School Code of Honor a little harder.