FarmerJohn
Has No Life - Lives on TB
MICHAEL COOPER AND JIM RUTENBERG, The New York Times
While harsh advertisements and negative attacks are a staple of presidential campaigns, Sen. John McCain has drawn an avalanche of criticism this week from Democrats, independent groups and even some Republicans for regularly stretching the truth in attacking Sen. Barack Obama's record and positions.
Obama has also been accused of distortions, but this week McCain has found himself under fire for a pair of headline-grabbing attacks. First the McCain campaign twisted Obama's words to suggest that he had compared Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, to a pig after Obama said, in questioning McCain's claim to be the change agent in the race, "You can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig." (McCain once used the same expression to describe Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's health plan.)
Then he falsely claimed that Obama supported "comprehensive sex ed" for kindergartners (he supported teaching them to be alert for inappropriate advances from adults).
Those attacks followed weeks in which McCain repeatedly, and incorrectly, asserted that Obama would raise taxes on the middle class, even though analysts say he would cut taxes on the middle class more than McCain would.
A McCain ad called "Fact Check" was itself found to be "less than honest" by FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan group.
"The last month, for sure, I think the predominance of liberty taken with truth and the facts has been more McCain than Obama," said Don Sipple, a Republican advertising strategist.
Indeed, in recent days, McCain has been increasingly called out by editorial boards, as well as independent analysts like FactCheck.org. The group, which does not judge whether one candidate is more misleading than another, has cried foul on McCain's campaign more than twice as often since the political conventions as it has on Obama's.
A McCain spokesman, Brian Rogers, said the campaign had evidence for all its claims. "We stand fully by everything that's in our ads," Rogers said, "and everything that we've been saying we provide detailed backup for -- everything, and if you and the Obama campaign want to disagree, that's your call."
For a candidate who came into the race promoting himself as a truth-teller, and who has long publicly deplored the kinds of negative tactics that helped sink his candidacy in the Republican primaries in 2000, the turnaround has been startling.
"They just keep stirring the pot, and I think the McCain folks realize if they can get this thing down in the mud, drag Obama into the mud, that's where they have the best advantage to win," said Matthew Dowd, who worked with many top McCain campaign advisers when he was President Bush's chief strategist in the 2004 campaign, but who since has had a falling-out with the White House.
Indeed, for all the criticism, the offensive seems to be having an effect. It has been widely credited by strategists in both parties with putting Obama on the defensive since it began earlier this summer.
Two can play
Obama's hands have not always been clean in this regard, either. He was called out earlier in the campaign for saying, incorrectly, that McCain supported a "hundred-year war" in Iraq after McCain said in January that he would be fine with a hypothetical 100-year American presence in Iraq, as long as Americans were not being injured or killed there.
More recently, Obama has been criticized for advertisements that have incorrectly accused McCain of not supporting loan guarantees for the auto industry -- a hot-button topic in Michigan.
He has also taken McCain's repeated comments that the American economy is "fundamentally sound" out of context, leaving out the fact that McCain almost always adds at the same time that he understands that times are tough and "people are hurting."
http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1216989.html
While harsh advertisements and negative attacks are a staple of presidential campaigns, Sen. John McCain has drawn an avalanche of criticism this week from Democrats, independent groups and even some Republicans for regularly stretching the truth in attacking Sen. Barack Obama's record and positions.
Obama has also been accused of distortions, but this week McCain has found himself under fire for a pair of headline-grabbing attacks. First the McCain campaign twisted Obama's words to suggest that he had compared Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, to a pig after Obama said, in questioning McCain's claim to be the change agent in the race, "You can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig." (McCain once used the same expression to describe Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's health plan.)
Then he falsely claimed that Obama supported "comprehensive sex ed" for kindergartners (he supported teaching them to be alert for inappropriate advances from adults).
Those attacks followed weeks in which McCain repeatedly, and incorrectly, asserted that Obama would raise taxes on the middle class, even though analysts say he would cut taxes on the middle class more than McCain would.
A McCain ad called "Fact Check" was itself found to be "less than honest" by FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan group.
"The last month, for sure, I think the predominance of liberty taken with truth and the facts has been more McCain than Obama," said Don Sipple, a Republican advertising strategist.
Indeed, in recent days, McCain has been increasingly called out by editorial boards, as well as independent analysts like FactCheck.org. The group, which does not judge whether one candidate is more misleading than another, has cried foul on McCain's campaign more than twice as often since the political conventions as it has on Obama's.
A McCain spokesman, Brian Rogers, said the campaign had evidence for all its claims. "We stand fully by everything that's in our ads," Rogers said, "and everything that we've been saying we provide detailed backup for -- everything, and if you and the Obama campaign want to disagree, that's your call."
For a candidate who came into the race promoting himself as a truth-teller, and who has long publicly deplored the kinds of negative tactics that helped sink his candidacy in the Republican primaries in 2000, the turnaround has been startling.
"They just keep stirring the pot, and I think the McCain folks realize if they can get this thing down in the mud, drag Obama into the mud, that's where they have the best advantage to win," said Matthew Dowd, who worked with many top McCain campaign advisers when he was President Bush's chief strategist in the 2004 campaign, but who since has had a falling-out with the White House.
Indeed, for all the criticism, the offensive seems to be having an effect. It has been widely credited by strategists in both parties with putting Obama on the defensive since it began earlier this summer.
Two can play
Obama's hands have not always been clean in this regard, either. He was called out earlier in the campaign for saying, incorrectly, that McCain supported a "hundred-year war" in Iraq after McCain said in January that he would be fine with a hypothetical 100-year American presence in Iraq, as long as Americans were not being injured or killed there.
More recently, Obama has been criticized for advertisements that have incorrectly accused McCain of not supporting loan guarantees for the auto industry -- a hot-button topic in Michigan.
He has also taken McCain's repeated comments that the American economy is "fundamentally sound" out of context, leaving out the fact that McCain almost always adds at the same time that he understands that times are tough and "people are hurting."
http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1216989.html