McCain Says Bias Attacks Wrong, Scolds Supporters: Will He Pull Smear Ads?

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14 October 2008 :: J.E. Robertson

Supporters of the McCain-Palin ticket shouting race-bias and false propaganda at PA rally, Saturday, one day after Sen. McCain tried to correct false impressions, called for civility

Sen. John McCain may be scrambling to save his political life. Of course, until the American people vote, it remains true he might win and become the next president of the United States. But the Branchflower report has just found his vice-presidential candidate guilty of abusing her office as Alaska governor, and he has just had to scold his own supporters for espousing racist and paranoid views which his campaign had at least implicitly sought to smear Obama with. His standing in the polls has fallen dramatically —as of today, RCP’s daily tracking poll average projects 313 Electoral College votes going to Obama, 158 to McCain, with 67 “toss up”—, and conservative luminaries are weighing in on his weakness as a candidate.

Last week, as the “rabble-rousing” issue overtook his campaign —the result of a decision to go 100% negative—, first a commercial advertising monitoring group in Wisconsin announced that 100% of the campaign’s advertising was negative, then media analysis suggested that 100% of its national advertising had gone negative. McCain had literally stopped delivering information to voters about what, if anything, he stood for, leaving Democrats and conservative opponents alike to attack the Arizona senator for lack of preparation and inconsistency.

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On Friday, however, McCain sought to stop the bleeding, calling his own supporters out when they expressed intolerant and biased views about Obama. He scolded one woman who called Obama an “Arab”, notifying her it was not true, and told voters generally, in response to a man saying he was “scared” of an Obama presidency —apparent fears of “socialism” permeating the misperception a lot of McCain supporters had voiced—, McCain said Obama “is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States”.

But sadly, McCain’s call for civility now looks like it may or may not be authentic, in that his campaign has continued to mail and to advertise the same smears that appear to have led to the “anger” issue that spurred violent incidents and comments last week. “Sadly”, in part because it would be to his benefit to get control of this mess, rein in the fringe activists, and somehow keep his running-mate from making irrational associations and provocative innuendos about Sen. Obama, if only to look less desperate.

While Sen. McCain himself seems to have toned down some rhetoric, the rallies have continued to be aggressive in their assault on Sen. Obama’s personal traits, with Gov. Palin continuing to suggest Obama is “dangerous” to America. She continued to suggest Obama would work against the military and that he favored surrender in armed conflict, despite his campaign’s relentless push for action to make substantive security gains in Afghanistan and to win the struggle to “capture or kill” Bin Laden and defeat the Taliban.

With McCain’s credibility seeming to slip with each new attempt to smear Obama, in a time of deep economic crisis, the question is: will he pull the ads and redirect his campaign, and all of its affiliate groups, to talk about the issues? Or was Friday’s flash of nobility just a photo-op designed to remind voters of the principled McCain of the 2000 contest, and distract them from the metamorphosed McCain who adopted the same tactics, even hiring the same consultants, that Bush used to destroy his 2000 campaign with lies and innuendo in the South Carolina Republican primary?

Was McCain just trying to save himself from the allegation that his campaign was actively seeking to promote a dangerous level of fear and anger in voters, disregarding the risk of a violent reaction to the smears? It has been suggested that as any politician might, given the logic of “wedge politics” —divide to persuade—, McCain aims to capitalize on the anger-politics his campaign has stoked, but without sacrificing his reputation as an honorable straight-talker.

It would seem it may be too late for that. Last week, the campaign had been reminded by commentary in the press that there was the chance some of the call-and-response moments in certain rallies could be interpreted as incitement under federal riot laws. That would of course be far worse for his cause than any smear he could conjure would be for his opponent’s cause. So we ask, incredulous: does he believe his own principled comments of the Friday town-hall meeting enough to pull the unfounded smear ads?

The fact that such anger and hostility, including violent threats, has continued to stain the campaign’s rallies, is a senseless shame to the majority of McCain supporters who likely find such extremist reactions unsavory and unacceptable. And there is increasing concern across the Republican party establishment that the campaign has lost control of its message and has awakened a sinister animal reaction to an ill-conceived message designed to inspire out-of-control negative reflexes.

William Kristol, neoconservative intellect celebre and pro-Republican analyst, has suggested McCain should fire his entire campaign, saying it is “now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional”, adding that “Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic.” Kristol also observed something that voters seem to have become attuned to, that “The 2008 campaign is now about something very big — both our future prosperity and our national security. Yet the McCain campaign has become smaller.”

Either Sen. McCain’s admonitions were not sincere, or he is not willing to substantially reprimand campaign operatives responsible for the ongoing attempt at character assassination. But the point is not whether Sen. McCain is doing the right thing —it’s obvious this kind of campaigning is not right, and that it’s not Sen. McCain’s preferred course—; the point is this is a disastrous strategy and it undermines the very idea of a campaign about issues and ideas, something he once claimed he would share in with Sen. Obama.

There is now the problem of whether racism is a hot-button issue in this election, and it must be said, in no uncertain terms, that the Obama campaign has NEVER, not once, raised this issue. It has come to the fore because of the radical and inexcusable reaction of a number of supporters at McCain-Palin rallies, whose frenzied vitriol seems to be a reaction to the message of those rallies, that Sen. Obama is different, and possibly dangerous to America. Sen. McCain must take responsibility for this atmosphere, and he must act to put an end to it.