The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen long ago turned me off as a reader – why waste time on him when I could get the same biting analysis from Ari Fleishcher, Tony Snow, or Dana Perino? So it was only by TPM’s suggestion that I bothered with today’s column:
McCain was going to fix all that. He was going to look the American people in the eyes and say, not me. I will not lie to you. I am John McCain, son and grandson of admirals. I tell the truth.
But Joy Behar knew better. And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can — as he did in South Carolina — renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won’t work. Karl Marx got one thing right — what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.
Now, that isn’t a particularly new or bold thing to say, but to see it coming from Richard Cohen? Wow. McCain’s campaign must have thought this (and many others like it) was probably coming, and that explains their preemptive screw-the-press strike. The established voting base will stick with McCain, of course – hell, McCain do every appearance in front of the Piss Christ between now and election day, and they’d still vote for him. But I don’t think the undecideds will fall for McCain’s lies without the constant covering that the establishment media has been doing for him for years. Seeing John McCain for what he is between now and November will do a lot of damage. No matter your politics, nobody likes a liar.
Beth
Yeah, the Cohen piece gave me a little hope, along with one in the Globe and Mail (which I can’t find now, sorry) about how the remainder of the campaign favors Obama’s style of campaigning: aggressive get-out-the-vote, on the ground contact with undecideds, etc. We may pull this out.