Liar: The Truly Deceptive Nature of John McCain’s Politics

Recently I wrote a post for Open Salon in response to an open call for letters on the topic of John McCain’s record of honesty or dishonesty. I chose to submit a post detailing McCain’s repeated lies regarding his support of veterans and their causes, because I felt it especially important to highlight McCain’s duplicity on a topic he seems to tout as his core value. In reality, there were any numbers of topics I could have chosen to illustrate the “Straight Talk” campaign is anything but, and should in reality more fittingly be called the “Double Speak” or “Forked Tongue” Campaign.

McCain constantly lies regarding his record, the record of his vice presidential pick, and the record of his opponents, with each lie ranging from the outrageous to the sleazy, but he is not alone. Ever since GW Bush took office and made an art form of naming things for their opposite reality, like the No Child Left Behind act that left all children without funding for the education program, the Clear Skies Act that supplanted and gutted the successful Clean Air act to weaken many environmental protections against air pollution, and of course the outrageous WMD lie that fueled the Iraqi war, deception has become a staple of Republican Politics. This verbal slight of hand, has led to some disastrous policy decisions, but seems to have become a permanent tactic in the Republican Party play book.

No one believes, of course, that politics is ever completely honest and free of any policy distortion or history rewriting, but the McCain campaign has slipped far beyond the normal pale. Time Magazine’s Joe Klein recently wrote, “In the early weeks of the general-election campaign, a consensus has grown in the political community — a consensus that ranges from practitioners like Karl Rove to commentators like, well, me — that John McCain has allowed his campaign to slip the normal bounds of political propriety.” If Karl Rove criticizes someone for dishonesty one has to know it is serious, considering Rove wrote the play book on dirty politics.

Some of the most obvious and outrageous lies McCain has been telling pertain to his own record, in which he says he supports veterans, or labor, or is an agent for economic oversight, or a patron of social equality for women. His own congressional voting record shows that he never supported one single veteran’s bill in the last 10 years, has a long record of voting against labor rights, and has repeatedly voted to ensure women and LGBT people would not have equal rights in the work place, or anywhere else in society.

McCain says he puts Country First but will vote to support corporate tax loopholes over populous interests every time. He has voted over and over again to cut taxes for oil and other corporate entities, while refusing to support tax cuts for the middle or lower classes.

McCain’s lies regarding Sarah Palin range from the mundane to the humorous. He calls her a reformer who took on the “old boys club” in Alaska even though she worked for the best well known “old boy” of them all, Ted Stevens, who is now being tried for corruption. He calls her the most popular governor in the nation despite reports from her state indicating she is not nearly so well liked, and he says he vetted Sarah Palin when in fact, he selected her by gut instinct rather than any well defined knowledge regarding her qualifications, or obvious lack of them.

McCain’s lies regarding Obama are even more outrageous. He lies when he suggests that Barack Obama favors a government-run health-care system when the truth is that Obama wants a market-based system subsidized by the government. McCain lied in his acceptance speech at the RNC when he said that Obama opposed offshore oil-drilling and the building of new nuclear-power plants, even after 38 million Americans heard Obama say in his speech at the DNC that he was open to both. McCain also ran one misleading political ad suggesting that Obama favored "comprehensive" sex education for kindergartners when in fact; the bill was aimed at teaching young children about sexual predatory dangers presented by pedophiles.

The absurd accusation that Obama was referring to Sarah Palin when he said McCain's effort to remarket his economic policies was putting "lipstick on a pig" was another clearly misleading attack by McCain, and an obnoxious diversionary tactic to allay attention from Palin's lack of fitness for the job by painting Obama as a sexist anti-Palin adversary.

It appears McCain’s campaign began to slide into the sea of half-truths and outright lies when he lost control of the one issue he expected to dominate; foreign policy. McCain was set to highlight his foreign policy experience over Obama’s by promoting his POW history, his support of the troop surge, and by touting his vague plan to win the war in Iraq. When Obama made his highly successful overseas visit and the Iraqi government announced they would support Obama’s Iraq strategy, McCain lost his hold on foreign policy, and perhaps the only policy in which he was able to dominate. It seems the only avenue left to McCain was the attempt to destroy his opponent through any means necessary, but mostly through deceit.
The lies, smears and half truths issued by McCain suggest that the campaign has decided “…its candidate can't win honorably, on the issues, so it has resorted to transparent and phony diversions.” While McCain continues to smear and distort the facts, the American people are left with the difficult task of seeking any glimmer of truth from a consummate liar with little remorse.
As the candidate’s spokesman Brian Rogers said to Politico regarding media criticism of McCain’s dishonest statements "We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”

It appears McCain’s campaign is finally ready to try a little refreshing honesty and admit they are not focused on honesty, integrity or facts, but are instead focused on winning, at any cost.














Sources: Sierra Club, Clear Skies Proposal Weakens the Clean Air Act, Environmental Update. Time.com, John McCain and the Lying Game, Joe Klein, Sept 17, 2008..Time.com, A Brief History Of: 'Putting Lipstick on a Pig', Marti Covington and Maya Curry / Washington, Sep. 11, 2008. Time.com, Understanding John McCain, JAMES CARNEY AND MICHAEL GRUNWALD, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008. MSNBC, WHEELS COME OFF STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS? Mark Murray, September 13, 2008. NPR, Sen. Stevens Indicted In Graft Probe, Martin Kaste and Michele Norris, September 29, 2008. Consortiumnews.com, John McCain v. The Truth, Robert Parry, October 2, 2008. The United States Senate, Legislative Votes Record.