It is an unwritten rule in presidential politics that opponents do not question each other's honesty. More precisely, the rule is that if the occasion arises to question the honesty of the other candidate, this is done through the use of a surrogate -- some Senator or Governor or other party leader who goes out and castigates the purported liar. Now Senator Obama has broken this rule and has called McCain a liar on an issue where he should be doomed to fail. Obama's latest ad calls McCain a liar for calling himself a maverick. After all, says Obama, McCain has lobbyists working in his campaign and has voted with Bush 90% of the time. This is a shocking position for Obama to take, and it is made even more shocking since the Obama campaign has been so sharp and on target through this election cycle. Perhaps the sting of Palin's attacks and of falling behind in all of the national polls has brought on this mistake.
Simply put, McCain is a maverick and has been known to be one for many years. McCain took on his party on immigration, on campaign finance reform, on the appointment of judges, on the environment, as well as on other issues. He also took on the entrenched opinion with regard to his long advocacy for the surge in Iraq. Each time he worked for a position that he believed to be right for America, no matter what the party leadership wanted. He worked with Democrats repeatedly and was almost written off as a potential presidential candidate because of his apostasy. How much more clear could his "maverick" status be?
On the other hand, Obama's idea of change is to speak about reaching across the aisle to the other party, but never to do so. I never tire of watching the Obama spokemen try to answer the question as to when Senator Obama actually went against his party on anything. At the Saddleback forum, Senator Obama himself said that he worked against his party and with a Republican when he cooperated with Senator McCain on a particular piece of legislation. Of course, Senator Obama was far from complete in his retelling of the story. Indeed, after initially telling McCain that he would support the legislation, Senator Obama was told by his leader, Harry Reid, that he needed to oppose it. Senator Obama, the dutiful party hack, changed his position and announced his opposition. In other words, the instance cited by Obama as the time when he opposed his party ended with his abandoning his position and going along with the party leadership as soon as he was told to do so. Some maverick! Obama also cannot point to any legislation that he pushed through or even attempted to push through the Senate where there was significant division in his own party. Of course, that is because Senator Obama has never authored any legislation in his short career in the Senate. So he has no achievements either with or without the support of his party.
I have to believe that millions of Americans will perceive this name calling attack by Obama as just old style gutter politics. Particularly since the Obama campaign has taken on McCain on his strongest attribute, it is likely that the attack will fail and Obama will just lose in the process. Is Obama a post partisan candidate? Millions more will come to see him as just another machine pol and this will wound him more than he knows.
My guess is that the Obama campaign is in full panic mode. After leading for months in the polls and opening a large lead after the Democratic convention, the Obama folks probably felt reasonably comfortable that they could hang on to get a victory, particularly given the various trends which favor the Democrats this year. To fall behind so quickly must have shaken them up. But even more so, to fall behind and to lose the position of "star" of the campaign to Sarah Palin, must put the Obama folks into a tizzy from which they did not see themselves recovering.
Many pundits have said that the Palin selection was a hail mary play by McCain. While some of this was just the usual media snobbery against Palin (how could she be anything but a desparation choice?), this latest ad by the Obama folks really is a hail mary. They are trying to regain their position as the true candidate of change. Instead, they have managed to get Obama portrayed as the true candidate of slime and deceit.
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