LARRY KING: We're back with Senator John McCain. We have an e-mail question from Scott in Chappaqua, New York. We haven't heard that city mentioned in a while. I have noticed particularly in the past few days that you've increased your use of negative ads and personal statements about Senator Obama. Whatever happened to your assurances you would not engage in such negativity. What about your calls for a civil and respectful campaign?
MCCAIN: Well, first of all, I admire and respect Senator Obama. He has done a great job securing the nomination to his party. He also used his opposition to the war in Iraq as a way to secure that. Look, there are just start differences between us and those differences need to be drawn, whether it be health care or he wants government to basically run the health care program. Whether it's taxes where he wants to raise taxes whereas I want to keep them low. ...
A question from "Scott" in New York is just the start of it. USA Today calls a new McCain ad "a marker on the path toward the kind of simplistic, counterproductive demonizing that many expect will poison the fall campaign." Andrea Mitchell of NBC News describes the McCain campaign's latest ad, about Obama and injured troops, "literally not true."
The contempt that many McCain aides hold for Barack Obama rivals the contempt that McCain held for Mitt Romney a year ago. McCain's advisers know that McCain is apt to treat those held in contempt contemptuously, but no inside McCain's campaign believes that aggressively negative television ads and McCain's public dismissals will "damage one of the most unique and most popular brands in American politics."
The cadre of McCain allies who aren't part of the campaign are very worried. They believe that McCain's current crop of advisers are playing to his worse instincts, particularly his pride and his ego. When McCain is privately content, he comes across publicly as happy-go-lucky and magnanimous; satisfied; when he is combative, he comes off as combative and reactive. They worry that he is obsessed with Obama's character and willing to attribute motives to Obama that are simply unbelievable outside of an echo chamber filled with those who are predisposed to believe Obama's a phony.
Christopher Hitchens, who supports McCain's view of Iraq and the surge and who has routinely mocked Das Ein writes that "McCain had one particular strength when this campaign began: his fortitude in respect of Iraq, which entailed (as some people forget) his willingness to criticize the commander in chief in time of war. Now he is in real danger of confusing the two things and trying to make criticism or disagreement appear to be suspect in themselves. If last week hasn't taught him that this is a doomed tactic--and strategy--then he is unteachable."
"I will defend every single word in every single ad," a senior McCain campaign adviser told me last week. "But you can't really blame Obama for gas prices," I responded. "As they say, if you're not part of the solution," and here the adviser paused and smiled, "you're part of the problem."
Concerns about whether McCain is coming off too mean, they say, are irrelevant. The media, they believe, has created double standard that allows them to view Obama's contempt for McCain as in-bounds and McCain's attempts to draw contrasts with Obama as out-of-bounds.
What do you think?
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It's preposterous. Obama is hitting McCain VERY hard on policy. McCain is going after "character" and committing low blows. Probably because he's losing on most issues right now (with the possible exception of the drilling, TBD). He's obviously flustered and is lashing out, and he may actually be in danger of losing his pals in his "base". Some may even start asking how the hell he plans to balance the budget, or how ridiculous it is to say he would kick Russia out of the G-8.
Posted by jay | July 29, 2008 9:58 AM