Will John McCain suspend his campaign to investigate Barack Obama’s past?
The disintegration of the current Republican presidential campaign into personal innuendo and the stoking of partisan fury (call it the Hate Talk Express) has provoked a great deal of serious, valuable commentary.
But it’s also provided an opportunity to witness some hilarious tone-deafness from the McCain camp. Responding to Barack Obama’s remarks today (“The American people aren’t looking for someone who can divide this country — they’re looking for someone who will lead it. We’re in a serious crisis — now, more than ever, it is time to put country ahead of politics.”), McCain spokesliar Tucker Bounds said:
Instead of acknowledging the real differences that exist in this election, Barack Obama is using America’s economic crisis to deflect legitimate criticisms of himself and his record.
Is that brilliant, or what? To help you appreciate the audacity of Bounds’ accusation, consider this tidbit from Frank Newport at Gallup Daily about their recent polling:
About half of Americans indicate in Gallup’s economic tracking measures that they personally had worried about money the day before they were interviewed.
Roughly fifty percent of the country is concerned about their financial security… and Team McCain’s attitude is, dammit, people, you’re letting this distract you from what really matters! Like who Barack Obama sat with during lunch at the school cafeteria when he was a teenager, and so on.
Fortunately for them, I have a solution. Since McCain needs to communicate to the American public how much more important Obama’s personal history is than this silly economic meltdown — and since the financial crisis itself was considered sufficient cause for McCain to “suspend” his campaign briefly a few weeks ago — he obviously needs to suspend his campaign again to personally lead an investigation into Obama’s life and acquaintances.
That would certainly get people’s attention, wouldn’t it? And canceling all those hostility-fueled rallies and insinuation-filled ads would have its own benefits for the rest of us. So it seems like a win-win all around.
(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)
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