Congress, News
An aide to Sen. John McCain’s campaign was suspended and supposedly reprimanded for distributing a video clip that questioned Barack Obama’s patriotism. Politico has the story:
Soren Dayton, who works in McCain’s political department, sent out the YouTube link of “Is Obama Wright?” on twitter at 12:31 today with the tag, “Good video on Obama and Wright.” It has since been taken down.
Twitter is an online device that allows users to send out short messages and links en masse through computers or PDAs.
McCain and his campaign have repeatedly said that they would stay away from personal attacks on Obama, but the temptation has increased as Wright’s words have dominated the race in recent days.
Last week, they included an op-ed that hammered Wright and Obama in their morning clip package emailed to reporters. The same day, a campaign aide they regretted doing so.
It’s an all-too-familiar pattern in this election — some “overzealous” staffer sends out a damaging byte of information and the campaign then says it’s sorry it didn’t mean to and that’s not the kind of campaign I am, honest.
It’s a convenient shield, this anthropomorphic campaign thingy. The campaign says things, does things, strives to behave in a civil manner, but always seems to backslide, for which it also is always ready to apologize and express remorse.
Meanwhile, the other guy’s campaign gets to act all hurt and self-righteous, while the girl’s campaign just sits back watching smugly as the boy campaigns tease each other.
Sounds kind of childish for a process of picking the most powerful leader in the world …
These tactics are straight from Karl Rove’s playbook. It is how Bush does things and now this is how McCain is going to campaign. This next Republican election will be meaner towards Obama, if he is nominated, than even Bush’s Swiftboat attacks on Kerry. You ain’t seen nothing, yet.
I agree with you Esther. As long as the voting public rewards these tactics with success, we can be guaranteed of seeing them continue. However, one “bright” spot is that none of this is new. Dirty politics was the reason that George Washington dropped out of the presidency. (He said he could take anything they threw at him, but he wasn’t going to have his daughters be targets for the muck machine.) Rove is a particular bastard and an egregious example, but he’s only a more recent example. It isn’t like Obama walked into this and got surprised that the other kids don’t play nice. Have faith. Let’s see what else he can do.