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Stop Me If You've Heard This One

This is not about the governor of Alaska. This is about the senior senator from Arizona who would be president of the United States.

Are we all clear on that?

To emphasize this, I will not use the governor's name in this posting. The only things you will need to know about the governor to follow along with this argument are these: The governor is an outspoken supporter of cultural conservativism and all that entails. And the governor is a (comparatively) young, (comparatively) attractive white female, the mother of at least four children. As conservative commentator Geroge Will put it on last week's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, "guns, god and babies, hot damn!"

Now, back to the senator.

The senator chose the governor as his running mate in his bid for the presidency. He had every right to do so.

He considered other options, and at least one of these was vetted pretty rigorously, another governor, Bob Crist of Florida.

The governor who was actually selected, however, was not.

The McCain staff didn't even bother to read the news archive of her hometown newspaper until after her selection was announced.

The McCain staff complained vigorously that she was in fact fully vetted, but these claims proved to be false, as many claims from the McCain staff have proven to be false.

Vetting means "to appraise, verify, or check for accuracy, authenticity, validity, etc.: An expert vetted the manuscript before publication."

Although the term is closely associated with veterinary practice, it is not insulting or demeaning to the object of the vetting process. The use of the term does not suggest that the vetted person is, in fact, a non-human or domesticated animal. The term has been used in this way for a long, long time.

So, point number one about the senator from Arizona who would be president: He chose someone as his running mate about whom he knew very little. Her credentials as described above were apparently sufficient qualifications, in his view, to run for vice president and perhaps president of the United States. I say run for, not serve, because we do not have sufficient evidence to determine that he gave much thought in his selection to anything beyond how well this choice would work during the election.

This matters because, regardless of whether this was a qualified-to-serve-as or a suitable-to-run-for sort of decision, we have to credit the senator with recognizing that it was an important decision. That means that it is reasonable to examine this decision for insights into how he will make other important decisions later in his life, perhaps as president of the United States.

One detractor saw in the senator's "speed-dating" of the governor a "decision-making process [that] is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless."

But his friends in the press (and contrary to the constant whining of his staff, he has many, and he and his staff know it) saw in that same preference for "gut instinct over fact" new proof of his rediscovered maverick self. See NBC's Norah O'Donnell and Newsweek's Howard Fineman on the Chris Matthews Show (31 Aug), Andrea Mitchell on NBC's Meet the Press (31 Aug) or staff writer Dan Balz of The Washington Post (29 Aug).

And, if you leave out the "Bush-like" part of that description for the Arizona senator's style of decision-making, it doesn't sound so bad. In fact, it kind of works with what is becoming the new dividing line in this election: the line between those elitists who look down their noses at us plain folk (or we plain folk, for we call ourselves both) just because they know stuff and think about things while we, well, we don't have to do all that because we believe and feel.

And that, my fellow Americans, is really, really scary. Because our next War of Choice -- promoted, declared, planned and executed straight from the hip -- could be much, much worse than the current 4,100-lives-to-date, 30,182 wounded so far, $10 billion per month fiasco.

Now on to point number two.

Having failed to properly vet his choice of running mate, he and his staff now vigorously oppose any attempt by anyone else to do that which they neglected to do. To scrutinize her past now, they argue, is to attack her.

Yet many people have been doing just that! These people include journalists, whom the McCain campaign has described as "liberals." And others, the campaign tells us, have included actual advocates for his opponent in the presidential election, whom the McCain campaign has portrayed in a television ad as a pack of wolves.

"As Obama drops in the polls," the ad ominously explains, "he'll try to destroy her."

There are a couple of things worth noting about this ad:

(1) Like a lot of McCain campaign ads FactCheck.org has investigated, it is dishonest. But this ad is unique, so far, in that it claims FactCheck.Org as a source for one of its dishonest claims. As FactCheck describes it, "The ad strives to convey the message that FactCheck.org said 'completely false' attacks on [the governor who, as I promised, shall remain nameless] had come from Sen. Barack Obama. We said no such thing. We have yet to dispute any claim from the Obama campaign about [her]."

Now, to be fair, FactCheck.Org also has disputed some claims of the Obama campaign. Most recently, their analysis has concluded that an Obama campaign ad "played fast and loose with" Sen. McCain's voting record on education. The organization is nonpartisan and strives to provide balanced coverage of the election.

But it is pretty much stuck with the reality in which it finds itself. Of 12 falsehoods exposed on the organization's front page this evening (14 Sep), two are ascribed to Obama, one to independent internet rumor mongers and the rest to the McCain campaign. That would be, um, seven, since 2 September. Ahem.

Well, um, that's less than one a day.

Anyway, as it turned out, once again according to FactCheck.Org, the other salient fact in the ad also turned out to be ... hmmm, how best to put this, uh, well, not exactly a fact. Quoting the ad, now, "The [Wall Street] Journal reports Obama 'air-dropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers' into Alaska to dig dirt on [the governor who shall remain nameless]."

Not exactly. FactCheck.Org labelled this a "distortion." WSJ, the organization reported, "did not say that the Obama team was there to 'dig dirt.' It said they were there to 'dig into her record and background.'"

In other words, WSJ said they were there to do that which the McCain campaign failed to do prior to selecting his running mate and that which they would prefer no-one do at this late date: vet the candidate.

In an update to the FactCheck.Org report, it is noted: "Furthermore, the Obama campaign insists that no researchers have been sent to Alaska and that the Journal owes them a correction." We'll have to see how that turns out for them.

So that's pretty much it for point number one regarding the wolves in Alaska ad: Except for the part that is a "distortion," it is "less than honest." And that, sadly, is no longer news. This is a campaign that has earned a reputation for distorting facts, fabricating lies and misleading voters.

The second thing worth noting is considerably more disturbing.

(2) To hear the McCain campaign tell it, this election is no longer about the tumbling economy or the misbegotten war. It's not about access to health care or lost jobs or wounded veterans or homes in foreclosure. Hell, it's not even about competence. Because, if you question the senator's competence or judgement, that's just another way of attacking the governor, who, did we mention, is a white Christian woman with at least four children.

No, my friends, this election is about protecting her from [show us a picture of Obama looking as much like Willie Horton and Malcom X as photo shop can make him look] HIM. "He'll try to destroy her!"

Now maybe it is just an accident of history. Or maybe it is by design. But if you do not think that this new emphasis on the part of the McCain campaign is going to resonate with a certain part of the American electorate then either you are too naive, or I am too cynical and -- in the interest of full disclosure -- you should know, before placing your bet, that I have been chided for my rabid optimism far more often than I have been praised for my pessimism.

This myth of the white woman in need of protection from the newly empowered black man was the foundational fairy tale of the Keltic Kirk Knights (KKK) and the primary plot line in both the literary and the cinematic treatments of its beginning during Reconstruction: Thomas Dixon's The Clansman and D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation. And, if we let them, the McCain campaign will make it the overarching issue of the coming election.

But the governor is not the issue here. Her running mate is the issue. And, to briefly recap: He demonstrated a flagrant disregard for rational decision-making in choosing her; and he continues to dishonorably and shamelessly broadcast things which he knows to be dishonest in an apparent attempt to shout down all proof to the contrary.