There are just layers upon layers of irony and stupidity packed into this article. So much that, to use Will’s phrase, it makes my balls hurt.
See, in the first place, we have campaign manager Rick Davis (who we’ve already established is a few bricks short of a load) making the bizarre claim that Obama is playing politics right now, while McCain isn’t. I suppose that making it a big point that your opponent is playing politics, saying, “Look at what happened today — did Barack Obama attack John McCain or Sarah Palin?”
As Politico notes, Obama criticized them over some rather “within bounds” point, and now Davis is going ape shit. News flash: when disaster is about to strike (note: it hasn’t struck), there’s no sudden lockdown that says one candidate or the other can’t make any comments about one another. Your family didn’t get slaughtered, it wasn’t your home that burned down. You’re not off-limits.
But then we get to the real meat of the situation:
While dismayed about the impact Gustav is sure to have on their convention, Republicans see the storm as another opportunity to paint McCain as somebody who, even to the detriment of his own campaign, is willing to sacrifice his political interests for a larger good.
“It’s pretty for him to set politics behind his country,” Davis stated. “He does it all the time. Believe me, it’s not the easiest way in the world to run a campaign. But this is business as usual in McCainworld.”
I’m not sure how to break this to everyone, but if you consider it an “opportunity” to give your candidate a certain image, then it isn’t to the detriment of your goddamn campaign. McCain keeps talking about how he’s willing to “lose a campaign” to do what he thinks is right, but no one’s pointed out that this is part of his image, and it’s what he’s actually counting on to win the campaign.
Here’s where the irony sets in. The last and most famous instance where McCain cited this trait was when he said Obama was willing to lose a war to win a campaign, and that he’d rather lose a campaign than lose a war. The problem was that very statement was exactly what the audience, and the entire voter bloc he’s targeting, wanted to hear.
He wasn’t hurting his campaign by saying he wants to win in Iraq. That’s what the GOP’s been campaigning on since the 2002 midterms even before the invasion. The odds of McCain talking about “wanting to win in Iraq” if it was hurting his poll numbers are somewhere between “zero” and “less than zero”. That’s why his list of flip-flops is so long, he’s gone further and further rightward for the sake of the campaign.
The phrase “I’m willing to lose the campaign by standing firm on this issue” should not be met with applause. It’s not a crowd-pleaser. It’s something one says while standing alone, in defense of an unpopular statement or action. Joe Lieberman as his running mate would have been incredibly bad for his campaign, but it would have proved he’s more interested in doing what’s right than winning (it would have also been stupid, granted). Palin wouldn’t have even made the list if he wasn’t sacrificing integrity for politics.
McCain’s flogging of “not playing politics” is, itself, playing politics. He uses it as garnish periodically when doing something that his supporters already want him to do, and the sad thing is that the media isn’t calling him on it. This is another political move of the highest order, McCain’s playing everyone like chumps by claiming otherwise.
