The Osterley Times: Obama: McCain is waging cynical campaign.

Obama has spoken out about McCain's disgraceful remark that he had "played the race card". Obama denied that he had ever played the race card and pointed out that no member of the press had ever imagined that his comments were doing so until the McCain camp decided to interpret them in that way. At that point the McCain camp's reading of things featured on the front cover of The New York Times for two days in a row. Obama lays out the point he was actually trying to make:

"I'm young, I'm new to the national scene,'' Obama said. "My name is Barack Obama. I was born in Hawaii. I spent time in Indonesia. I do not have the typical biography of a presidential candidate. What that means is, I am unfamiliar, and people are still trying to get a fix on who I am... So... what has been an approach of the McCain campaign is to say, 'He's risky,' to try to divert focus from the fact that they don't have any ideas for dealing with the economy, or dealing with education...

"The one thing we know about the team that John McCain has assembled, because it's a carry-over from some of the folks who have worked on the Bush campaigns,'' Obama said at a press conference at Cape Canaveral, Fla. "They are very good at negative campaigns They are not so good at governing. If you think about this week, what they have been good at is distracting... (Jobs are being lost) and what was being talked about was Paris and Britney. They are clever about distracting people from the issues that really matter in peoples' lives.

This is the main point. The Republicans are seeking to make this election a referendum on Barack Obama because this is a brilliant way to change the focus away from the policies of both parties. A majority of Americans want troops out of Iraq. A majority of Americans want a national health system. McCain's policies on these and many other issues are political poison.

So, as happens every four years in the American election cycle, the Republicans are seeking to redefine what's important. Suddenly it's all about the "character" of the two candidates and not about their policies, and the American press always seem to follow suit, never calling the Republicans for this awful game they always play.

Indeed, one of them had the sheer gall to ask Obama if he too wasn't engaged in negative campaigning:

"This is the classic dilemma of politics,'' Obama replied. "We get four or five shots in a row (assertions by McCain), that I would rather lose a war so that I can win a campaign, that I am not willing to visit the troops, that I somehow am full of myself, that I'm an empty-headed celebrity, whatever repeated attacks have been launched this week, so when I say, boy those are kind of silly arguments, the press says, isn't that being negative. Well no, I'm describing what their strategy has been for the last week... I'm just stating the facts....
"Ultimately, what I think we've got to do is keep driving home the essential message of this campaign, that we've got to change business as usual... What we've seen this week ahs been politics as usual... This is the same thing that was done four years or eight years ago... You guys are all familiar with this. You've seen this before. We've seen this movie before.''

Not only have the American press seen this movie before, they have had leading roles in it.

Quite how defending yourself from scurrilous accusations and pointing out how dumb they are becomes negative campaigning is simply beyond me, but the American press are clueless when it comes to this stuff which is why the McCain camp are able to get away with shit like this:

"Let me be clear, in no way do I think John McCain's campaign was being racist,'' Obama said. "I think they're cynical,''
To which McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds today replied:
"We're glad the Obama campaign retracted Barack Obama's accusation because it was absolutely false, and we're moving on."

Obama never made any such accusation and the press, who had been listening to Obama make the same points for weeks, never thought Obama was making such an accusation. McCain has cynically introduced race into the election and now has the gall to pretend that an accusation which was never made has been retracted.

The American political process is poisoned by the fact that it's press allow this shit to be played out in front of them and then have the gall to ask Obama if he's being negative when he defends himself from baseless accusations about his "presumptuousness" or his "arrogance". Qualities which are always in the eye of the beholder rather than anything concrete like policy, which the Republicans always run away from or reduce to mindless, untrue slogans such as "Obama is against offshore drilling and wants us to have high gas prices".

McCain can only get away with this crap because no-one from the press is calling him on it. No-one is asking him to point out what correlation he imagines exists between current high gas prices and offshore drilling which wouldn't deliver any oil for at least ten years. Nor are they asking why, if drilling is the answer, aren't the oil companies drilling in any of the other areas where they have permission to drill.

So we now see Obama having to backtrack because McCain is able to make these utterly bogus points harm Obama's campaign because the press do not question McCain's logic.

When, after the last week of McCain's interminable negativity, the press find themselves asking Obama if he is being negative by defending himself, the fact that the press are giving McCain a free pass becomes simply indisputable. And simply disgraceful.

American politics is so cynical because it's press appear to see themselves as little more than stenographers, dutifully writing down what each candidate says, rather than questioning whether or not what each candidate says is actually true or false.

That is why we find ourselves in the parallel universe where John McCain can accuse a black man of introducing race into the election.

UPDATE:

Here's a perfect example of the shit McCain gets way with:

You'll notice he refuses to define how Obama is supposed to have "played the race card" and then reiterates the lie that the Obama camp have withdrawn this remark. He then astonishingly claims that he backed Martin Luther King Day. This is an amazingly hazy recollection of his actual voting record:

* FACT: McCain Supported Republican AZ Governor’s Decision To Rescind MLK Holiday. ABC News reported, “In Arizona, a bill to recognize a holiday honoring MLK failed in the legislature, so then-Gov. Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat, declared one through executive order. In January 1987, the first act of Arizona’s new governor, Republican Evan Mecham, was to rescind the executive order by his predecessor to create an MLK holiday. Arizona’s stance became a national controversy. McCain backed the decision at the time.” [ABC News, 4/3/08]

* FACT: McCain Supported Gov. Evan Mecham’s Decision In 1987 To Rescind Martin Luther King Jr. Day. As reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, “In a vote likely to haunt him for the rest of his public career, McCain voted against 1983 legislation establishing the third Monday in January as the federal holiday marking King’s birthday. Back home in Arizona, he supported Gov. Evan Mecham’s decision in 1987 to rescind an executive order creating a state holiday for King, but later reversed his position.”
[Philadelphia Inquirer, 6/16/08]

* FACT: McCain Voted Against Creating Martin Luther King Holiday. In 1983, McCain voted against a motion to suspend the rules and pass a bill to designate the third Monday of every January as a federal holiday in honor of the late civil rights leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The motion passed 89-77. [HR 3706, Vote 289, 8/2/83; CQ
1983]

Will the press call him on this? I won't be holding my breath.