Yesterday, The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman wrote an article drawing a false equivalence between anonymous smear emails being sent around about Sarah Palin and the McCain campaigns' reckless disregard for the truth as though the former justified the latter. He also got some of his facts wrong, but what was most memorable was this quote from Republican strategist John Feehery:
"The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she's new, she's popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent," Feehery said. "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."
SoFeehery is saying that the McCain campaign will lie to the Americanpeople, and will get away with it because no one cares about the facts. Notonly that, but people will be offended by the facts if you report themabout the person the GOP happens to be running for vice president. Sodon't bother.
As Matthew Yglesias pointed out yesterday, many in the campaign press, rather than being offended by the notion that "facts don't matter," have essentially embraced it as part of their given circumstances. Today Weisman's Post article on the campaign makes Feehery sound prophetic. Weisman simply notes McCain's attacks the way a boxing judge might count punches, without evaluating their veracity or merit whatsoever.
Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign launched a broadside against Sen. Barack Obama yesterday, accusing him of a sexist smear, comparing his campaign to a pack of wolves on the prowl against the GOP vice presidential pick, charging that the Democratic nominee favored sex education for kindergartners, and resurrecting the comments of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.The assault came a day before the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, when McCain and Obama are scheduled to appear together at Ground Zero during a mutually declared truce. That cease-fire is not likely to last long. With the airwaves already filling up with some of the most negative imagery of the campaign, Obama aides hinted that they would save their toughest counterpunch until after Sept. 11.
This is in the great tradition of American stenography. It's hard to see how the McCain campaign would have recounted these events differently had it written the article itself. The McCain campaign can afford to lie because reporters don't seem interested in or able to find out what is true and what isn't in real time. I don't mean to single out Weisman. The problem is essentially one of craft, of how Americans cover politics. The week will see at least five reports liketoday's, in every paper, devoid of any concern about whether or notthose "little facts" really matter, and perhaps one a week purportingto "fact-check" but instead offering false parities in the name of fairness.
Facts are not a part of our daily campaign coverage. Facts are a feature story.
It seems to me at this point that the press is simply acting as a very expensive middleman. We might as well get rid of the campaign press all together and allow the PR wings of either campaign tell us what's true and what isn't. Except the campaigns themselves need the press, because they need to be able to repeat lies and give them the veneer of truth by filtering them through a third party ostensibly committed to telling you what matters. If the campaign press didn't exist, the campaigns would have to invent them. And if they had, it's hard to imagine they would be much different than they are today.
--A. Serwer
