McCain: Bad Liar and Loser

Update: Politics of bigotry may finally be over
Amid the voter suppression, the GOP corruption (for example Wisconsin Atty Gen. J.B. Van Hollen, US Atty Gen. Michael Mukasey), the appeals to fear and xenophobia (one can go on), an observer can plainly see why John McCain is going to lose.

Sure, the structure of the campaign in light of the economy and a divided GOP are instructive.

But one other aspect of the McCain campaign is clear: He's a horrible liar, hence an unsuccessful GOP presidential nominee for which lying is a necessity to winning a presidential general election. [The same imperative does not apply to the Democratic nominee but that's for a different column.]

"Detractory or defamatory lies should not be quite opposite to the qualities the person is supposed to have, " writes Dr. John Arbuthnot in Treatise on the Art of Political Lying (1714), (cited by Hitchens, Grand Street, Autumn, 1985).

In other words, the political lie has to be plausible. It must fit onto the existing image if it is to be believed, and the target audience of the lie has to be susceptible.

As Wall Street veers wildly and Americans fear for their families' futures, McCain and Palin are repeatedly and desperately hitting Obama for being a "redistributor," a President Robinhood who wants to take your money for which you work and then give the money away to others.

Give away to whom? It is darkly suggested in the paranoid, fearful minds of the Republican base though not explicitly stated, that blacks and Mexicans are the amorphous 'others' whom we must fear, along with their bag man Obama.

McCain and Palin have two problems with their political lies.

Never mind the incoherence with which Palin and McCain deliver the message, the existing psychological matrix of the electorate is inadequate for McCain's purposes; the public sees minorities absent the hostility of 30 years ago.

That's why few "independents" and "moderates" are buying McCain's snake oil.

Considering Obama's obvious qualities, the lie of his taking away our money and giving it away just does not ring true.

Not in Obama's biography that is well known now, not in Obama's steady debate performances, not in Obama's reasonable-sounding economic and tax proposals, not in his clear empathy for working families, and certainly not in the money being taken away right now from our retirement accounts by the cold free markets and years of Republican rule that Obama is in no way a part of, but with whom McCain is intimately and indisputably tied.

And as millions of Americans see $10,000s of their savings go down the drain, the "redistributor" brand just does not seem all that threatening anyway; it even has a certain appeal.

The lie is implausible and the audience is no longer there to believe it.

That's what makes McCain an ineffective liar and a political loser.

- via mal contends