Politicking (from 5 October)

It looks like John McCain has finally just given up on the idea that his policies are better than Barack Obama's. Or at least on the idea that he's going to be able to convince the American people of that. His campaign in the past few weeks has been so ugly that even Karl Rove has said that he needs to reconsider some of his ads. But now he's planning a 'fiercer' strategy against Obama . My first reaction to that headline was to wonder if that was even possible; my second was astonishment that McCain thinks that this is actually going to win over the independents he needs. Many of the things he says are demonstrably false and/or misleading, including one of the points he will probably be focusing on in some of his new ads: the relationship between Obama and William Ayers, something that Sarah Palin has also been discussing recently. This issue has been in discussion since the primaries, and it seems to be the general consensus (as the last article points out) that there was no close connection between Obama and Ayers.

It isn't as though Obama's campaign is entirely innocent of these kinds of attacks, but it is my feeling that he has maintained a higher standard of honesty and a better balanced array of ads. Though both candidates have spent about the same amount on attack ads, Obama is spending much more overall on ads and slightly less on attack ads, so while almost all of John McCain's advertising budget is now going into negative ads, less than half of Obama's is. Looking at the current top three McCain ads and the probable future targets, I don’t think that there is any content of real substance in any of them - he's accusing Obama of trying to raise everyone's taxes (false), advocating 'massive government' (questionable and not specific enough to constitute a genuine policy disagreement) blaming the policies he advocates for sending American jobs overseas (questionable) and being 'mum' on the market crisis (severely questionable). On the other hand, Obama's attacks address ISSUES like Social Security, health care, and the economy. (Disturbing side note - commenters on this article note that the McCain ad seems to be trying to 'darken' Obama. If you watch the beginning of the ad, it is kind of striking. I don't know if this is intentional, but if it is, well, I don't even know what to say. I honestly didn't think even McCain was that sleazy.)

What this all boils down to, for me at least, is that McCain is in essence admitting that he is less suited to be the president that the American people want than Obama is (slightly different than being the best president for the American people, which I hope he still believes he is, though I may not agree with him). He knows that he's not winning on issues - as this blog describes, no Republican is going to win a debate on the Iraq war today, and voters prefer Obama on the economy as well. He's even pulling his ads stressing the good things about himself in favor of those ads talking about the bad things about Obama, indicating that he thinks he can only win the personality contest by smearing his opponent. (And let's face it, those positive ads don't ring so true anymore either. Joe Biden did a pretty good job of deconstructing the 'maverick' persona, and all the lying/misinterpreting has made American voters less inclined to believe the 'Straight Talk Express'.)

So what does John McCain have going for him right now? In my estimation, not much. Sarah Palin didn't help (she might have done better than expected in the debate, but Biden won more voters, attacking Barack Obama isn't helping, and I don't see it getting any better (even the Washington Post is considering endorsing Obama. I've never agreed with McCain on the majority of policy issues, but before this election I at least respected him for playing fair, telling the truth, and standing up for what he believed him. Today, even that is gone.

Other miscellany:
-I just watched the vp debate online - it's legal and free. Near the end, Biden starts talking about Mike Mansfield, a former Montana senator (the library at the U of Montana is named after him). That made me smile, although other parts of the debate made me pretty angry. There's a good fact checking article in Newsweek.
-A recent look at what the electoral vote is looking like - good news, especially when you consider that at the moment Obama would win the popular vote by as much as 13% right now (summary of polls, Daily Kos poll) and in almost every poll is leading by percentages outside the margin of error.