Taking the road that's most convenient
JOHN MCCAIN is back on the high road - or is he?
With a new stump speech Monday and new economic proposals yesterday, the GOP nominee has supposedly shifted his focus from Barack Obama's character to actual issues.
But the man who proclaimed in 2000 that he wouldn't "take the low road to the highest office in the land" has found that tawdry trail awfully seductive of late. So it's fair to suspect the real reason McCain is seeking higher ground - if indeed he is - is that his campaign chariot had gotten mired in the muck.
Certainly Sarah Palin's charge that Obama "is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country" is the most repellant we've seen from either ticket so far.
Mind you, it's not clear that McCain really will pursue a different path in the remaining weeks. Although he has recently tried to cool the passions of some over-the-top Obama opponents, speaking Monday on a St. Louis radio show the Arizona senator also said he is likely to bring up former Weather Underground radical William Ayers in tonight's debate.
"It's not that I give a damn about some old, washed-up terrorist . . .," he said. "What I care about and what the American people care about is whether he is being truthful with the American people . . ."
If Obama was aware of Ayers's violent past - his campaign claims he wasn't - it was a serious error in judgment to have had a 1995 state Senate campaign event at his home.
And yet if, as McCain says, truthfulness is the real issue here, the Republican nominee and his ticketmate are the ones who should be under the microscope.
After a painstaking examination of the Obama-Ayers association, the well-regarded nonpartisan FactCheck.org concluded that McCain and Palin are trying "to sway voters - in ads and on the stump - with false and misleading statements about the relationship, which was never very close."
Sadly, the same conservative establishment that erupts in outrage at any intemperate utterance by a Democrat seems endlessly tolerant of that type of politics when it helps the Republican cause.
Consider: Over the last few days, conservatives have waxed wroth that Georgia Congressman John Lewis compared John McCain and Sarah Palin's campaign rhetoric with that of former segregationist governor George Wallace of Alabama and suggested it could incite violence. And on this one, I think McCain and the conservatives have a point.
But what about the far more outrageous contention Fox News recently let Andy Martin air, unchallenged, about Obama?
A little background on Martin. As both The New York Times and The
In other words, Martin is the kind of obvious crank a responsible journalist wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. And yet, Sean Hannity, arguably one of the nation's most influential conservative media hosts, used Martin extensively in a recent "Hannity's America" presentation highlighting Obama's supposed radical connections.
On that Fox News show, Martin made this jaw-dropping statement: Obama's time as a Chicago community organizer was actually "training for a radical overthrow of the government." Hannity let Martin's comment pass unchallenged.
Now, if a prominent liberal TV host let a comparably louche left-wing character accuse McCain of training for treason as part of his own attempt to undermine him, the Grand Coulee Dam itself wouldn't suffice to contain the flood of outrage.
So as we wait to see how McCain will comport himself in tonight's debate, here's a question to contemplate: Where is the principled conservative indignation over Martin's despicable allegation?
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. 