Values and Truth

by Michael Ekstract

How crazy is this? John McCain is being booed at rallies for saying that Barack Obama is a decent man. C’mon, John, you let Sarah Palin and your attack team unleash this ferocious and extremely deceitful campaign against Obama claiming falsely that he pals around with terrorists (don’t take my word; check with the Annenberg Center).

I remember when John McCain was a man I respected, a man of seeming integrity. Sure, I might disagree on issues but he seemed like a decent man with the potential to promote bipartisan moderation and compromise.

They say that absolute power corrupts but it seems that so does watching potential power slip away. It’s sad really. How can John McCain allow vicious and disgraceful attack campaigns to go on and then try to participate with any integrity in the U.S. Senate?

Maybe that’s why McCain is now saying that Obama is a decent man. I see a few possible reasons:

1) The Republican Campaign Directors have told John that he needs to appear fair and decent. Let the pit bulls and sleazy ad folks do the tarring. You just blow around some feathers.

2) This is part of the Republican Attack Campaign strategy. Raise serious doubts about the opponent’s patriotism and character and then have the Republican candidate say decent things so he can pretend to moderate voters that he never intended to say these bad things. But the seed is planted and elsewhere Attack Specialists are reinforcing the negative story even while the candidate pretends he’s not.

3) McCain is actually a decent man and there’s a limit to what he will tolerate.

4) The smear campaign against Obama had made many Republicans so fiercely hateful against Obama that McCain and his team feared a backlash and decided to try to reduce the flames (without fully extinguishing them — McCain told supporters they should still be ferocious).

I’m sure other folks could have other possible reasons but I don’t think any of us can trust John McCain’s motives unless he clearly and unequivocally denounces this ugly deceptive smear campaign and the hatred it has encouraged.

If Senator McCain is truly a decent man who cares about America, he needs to clearly state that his campaign was wrong to make false accusations that tried to link Senator Obama with a terrorist. Mr. McCain needs to very openly publicly apologize to the Obama campaign. He needs to unequivocally tell his supporters that Senator Barack Obama is a good, Christian American who is very capable of being a good, decent President.

And he needs to see to it that the negative smear campaign is stopped and that his people send out clear information to correct the public record and to reduce the hate.

That would signal that McCain really is both a man of integrity and a maverick willing to break from the nasty divisive tactics of the Rove/Ayles wing of the Republican party.

Ironically, that might help McCain much more than this hate-stirring nonsense his handlers have created for him.