He's A Lying Old Man

by Steve Soto

I give Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz credit this morning for covering an issue that needs more attention: Do John McCain's repeated misstatements deserve more coverage than they are getting? MSNBC's Dan Abrams to his credit has been all over this issue of late as well. Still, few in the media have understood what's behind the recent right wing pushback narrative that Obama gets too much positive coverage: this is really nothing more than a typical Rovian preemptive attack to hide McCain's mistakes and ensure better coverage for his smear campaign. Rove is simply attacking from McCain's position of weakness once again, namely McCain's years of favorable uncritical coverage.

Several commentators note correctly that if Barack Obama had made the Sunni-Shia, Czechoslovakia, and Iraq/Pakistan border slip-ups, the right wing and mainstream media would be hammering him for his inexperience. Until recently, McCain was getting a free pass on these blunders, and in the case of the whitewashing "CBS News with Katie Couric", McCain was aided by the network's editing out yesterday of his lie that the surge led to the Sunni Awakening.

McCain supporters strangely rally to defend him by saying of course he has the knowledge to know these things, based on his alleged experience. But to buy that argument, and I don't, it means that McCain knows better when he utters these mistakes and outright lies, but either because of age or mendacity or both he says this crap anyway. All of which makes him a lying old man. As for his alleged experience, McCain has never been known as a foreign policy expert in the Senate, having served a long time on Armed Services and never on Foreign Relations. His claim to being experienced is that he was a POW and Navy flyer, honorable things to be sure but not things in and of themselves that recommend him over others who have better brains and are strategic thinkers.

Candidates will make mistakes, as evidenced by Obama's slip-up yesterday, simply because the demands of campaigning produce gaffes. That isn't the same thing as repeating lies and misstatements, even after being corrected on them more than once. To do what McCain is doing represents a lack of integrity and a willingness to say anything to win the office even at the expense of the truth, which is another reason why McCain is simply Bush's third term.

He's worse than a doddering imbecile. He's revealing himself to be a lying old man who knows exactly what he is doing and is unfit for the office. It's about time the media got off the bus, avoided the BBQs, and noticed.