Blog or Die!

Commenting on Obama’s speech on race, someone said: “he spoke to us as adults.” That’s a profound observation and in 6 words sums up the difference between the Obama campaign and the McCain campaign.

I am continually thankful for some of my high school education back in rural Alabama in the late 60’s. They took pains to teach us how to recognize propaganda and fallacy. When I asked my English teacher if I could write some propaganda for a class project, she said no. She said that there was no value in learning how to write that way because it was wrong. Since that time, I’ve looked at “spin” and innuendo, and guilt by association, and poisoning the well, and “get on the band wagon” in terms of right and wrong. I am also insulted when someone directs these things at me, because I am smarter than that.

Heaven knows that the McCain campaign is not so bad as some of the stuff on some conservative blogs, but it is still bad. Every time McCain brings out Bill Ayers, or lies about Obama’s tax plan, he is saying “I don’t trust you with the truth”. He is saying “my winning is more important than my integrity”. He is saying “you’re too stupid to realize what I’m doing”. It is condescending and it is insulting. Obama has been candid, forthright, and he spoke to us as adults.

I was driving through Alabama Wednesday–nothing but classical music on the public radio station, but there were plenty of Christian talk radio stations, one of which had an interview show with Phyllis Schlafly, the “anti-feminist” I remember from my youth, and now the celebrity on a conservative web site called eagleforum.org.

Schlafly was talking about Obama and William Ayres. She said that some investigator had developed evidence that Ayres had ghost-written Obama’s first book, Dreams from my Father.

A person of integrity takes a position and defends it. Did Schlafly say “I believe that William Ayres wrote the book”? No. Either she believes it and lacks the courage to say so, or she doesn’t believe it and puts the accusation out there dishonestly.

McCain essentially did the same thing in the final debate. He never said “Obama is a closet radical”, or “Ayers was Obama’s mentor” or “Obama is reckless in his associations”. Rather than showing the courage of conviction (surely McCain has the resources to find out the truth of the matter) he just flung an association like a handful of mud. If McCain were courageous and made a concrete accusation, he would be discredited if proven wrong. So he makes an innuendo that he probably doesn’t believe himself.

Dishonest or cowardly? Your pick.

I only got to listen to the last half of the debate (audio only) and I gave the edge to McCain. McCain rattled more XXXX-istans than Obama and I thought Obama was struggling to get his points across comprehensibly. I did think the “Senator Obama just doesn’t understand” was overdone. Obama said he had gone to Eastern Europe with Sen. Lugar to oversee the securing of old Soviet missiles. McCain trumped Obama with the claim that he was partly responsible for originating the Nunn-Lugar bill that paid for securing those weapons. Whether McCain’s claim was justified or not, it rang true.

Imagine my surprise this morning to see the polls on CNN that gave the debate to Obama by a huge margin. But it may well be that the difference between my perception and the polls was that I only listened to the last half of the debate.

However, McCain made one big blunder and Obama called him on it.  McCain claimed that Obama had voted against funding the troops (I think twice). Obama replied that McCain had voted to fund the troops with no timetable for withdrawal, and that he had voted to fund the troops WITH a timetable (and both had voted against the opposite). He explained that the differences were about the timetable, not funding the troops. Obama was totally credible at that point, and it was clear to me that McCain had been caught trying mislead the voters with the old voting record manipulation trick. I think this was a hugely embarrassing moment.

I thought one of the substantive points of difference between Obama and McCain was on that preconditions thing. I don’t know how clear it was to the viewers what was going on. When Obama says that he is willing to meet with anyone without preconditions, he means “he” in the sense of “his administration” not himself personally. McCain insisted that it be taken literally and that Obama personally was going to meet with anyone thereby giving that person credibility by having talked with the President of the United States. This was disingenuous of McCain. McCain’s interpretation was, in fact, so unreasonable that I wonder if Obama realized what McCain meant.