John McCain was Better Than This Once

I expect more from John McCain than we are seeing.

This is a man whose signature issue 8 years ago was Campaign Finance Reform.

This is a man who was slandered worse than anyone in the past 20 years of political campaigns when the Bush campaign destroyed him in South Carolina in 2000.

But as was pointed out in a comment on a blog article McCain now has some of those people that slandered him,, currently on his pay role. In fact the person who may have been most responsible for those 2000 South Carolina primary, Tucker Eskew, is now working directly with Governor Palin.

We heard John McCain at the convention talk about a different kind of politics, changing the way things are done in Washington, and for years talk about the need to clean up our campaigns. Remember, the line at the end or beginning of campaign commercials,,,

"I'm Candidate X and I approve this message"

That line is a result of the McCain-Feingold bill. I remember John McCain saying in interviews that this meant candidates had to stand by their ads, and if they were bad, or misleading, they would 'pay the price'.

Today, John McCain finally lost me. I have tried to see the old McCain, the Maverick, but his campaign released two ads today that are ridiculous. His convention speech, which was generally upbeat and positive doesn't stand the smell test of his two ads today.

Now above everything else that I have written on this blog is that this election has to be about issues. That we have real problems, too many for me to write in this article.

Yet the McCain team has gone from being the victim of the Rove-Bush politics that said he had a black child in South Carolina in 2000, to using similar strategies.

It's very disappointing to me, because as someone who stood up for John McCain in 2000 and in years since, I never thought he would stoop to this level. It's a flip flop of his values, and it's dragging this campaign into the mud.

Everything they've done recently has worked so these ad's may end up being effective, but I think these ads, and the distortions and ugliness of them, may backfire. Maybe not, but I usually put faith in people.

The first ad claims that Obama authored a bill that said we should teach kindergarten kids sex education. It's a false claim, instead it was a bill that talked about teaching young kids what they should tell their parents, when older people touched them. It was designed to give kids lessons to prevent potential sexual abuse.

How do I know this, because this is not an original attack. Team McCain stole this from Obama's 2004 Senate opponent, Alan Keyes, who tried the same lie of attack ('lie of attack', like that?). Obama is a parent of two beautiful little girls, to try and label him as someone pushing sex on kids!

John McCain was once better than that.

The second ad surrounds the 'lipstick' comment Obama made yesterday. It was a comment he made about John McCain. Yet the McCain campaign responds with an ad saying Obama said 'lipstick on a pig, is still a pig' about Sarah Palin.

Here are the video of Obama. I think people can see this for themself and make their own minds up. This is not an issue of any consequence so watche these three clips, Obama's original statement, the McCain ad, and Obama's subsequent response.

The only editorial comment from me before these clips is this...

The ad was a web ad, this means John McCain, never had to say, "this is John McCain and I approve this message."