Nipping them in the Bud

The McCain campaign has sunk to a new low, putting out two new ads that blatantly lie about Obama's record and statements.

The first:

A new 30-second TV ad attacks Barack Obama's record on education, saying that Obama backed legislation to teach "'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners." The announcer then says, "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

Why that's wrong: This is a deliberately misleading accusation. It came hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad critical of McCain's votes on public education. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did vote for but was not a sponsor of legislation dealing with sex ed for grades K-12. But the legislation allowed local school boards to teach "age-appropriate" sex education, not comprehensive lessons to kindergartners, and it gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.

The second:

An ad claiming that Obama called Palin a pig-

The point Barack Obama was making today is that John McCain is not about change. Rather he and running mate Sarah Palin are about more of the same - no matter how they package it.
“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” Obama said. “You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,’ it’s still going to stink.”

The McCain team is saying that’s mockery gone too far. They say Obama called Palin a pig - drawing a parallel to Palin’s well-used remark that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick.

I've been thinking about why it is that Republicans are willing to make these ridiculous charges, which often wind up being effective, and Democratic candidates are not. The conventional wisdom is that the GOP is better at playing dirty, or that the Dem candidate is aloof and not willing to get his or her hands dirty. I think those factors are part of it, but I think the issue goes deeper. There's a significant strain of "good government" types in the Democratic party- people who aren't particularly partisan, think that both sides are acting in good faith and sometimes have good policy ideas. I'm probably one of those folks- what interested me most about Obama initially was the degree of respect he paid to GOP ideas in "The Audacity of Hope," and how reasonable he seemed. That block of voters probably weeds out a lot of hyperpartisan, dirty-fighting Dems- either in the presidential primaries (see Obama over Hillary) or even earlier- when candidates are running for the statewide or federal offices from which presidential candidates spring.

Guys like Freddy Ferrer in New York or Cruz Bustamante in California, who were sharp operators willing to sling mud were beaten by relatively post-partisan Republicans Mike Bloomberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who both had significant support from Democrats (myself included) who viewed Ferrer and Bustamante as hacks. The upshot is, there is no Governor Bustamante running for President who's willing to slime McCain and Palin