Time's Michael Scherer, a veteran of such religiously centrist bastions as Salon, Mother Jones, and The Columbia Journalism Review, slams "the left blog crowd," because you can't really get jumped into the MSM until you've tossed multiple exclamation points at "the angry left" from the peak of Mount Objectivity.
How dare I criticize Obama!!! What an outrage!!!! Haven't I learned my lesson, from the unbiased watchdogs at Media Matters (and their linkers Atrios and Josh Marshall): an honest journalist criticizes Obama at his peril, lest he bring a swarm of alleged lazy hackery and "wanker" labels from the left blog crowd. I quake in my office chair, and rebut after the jump.
Scherer made some claims that the folks at Media Matters disagreed with. In the course of defending himself, Scherer makes an argument he can't possibly believe.
The post mentions three ads that all share the same problem, which is clearly identified in the first paragraph. To wit, instead of talking about the opponents' plans, the ads talk about the opponents' past votes. This process obstructs the debate that should be happening about the candidate's plans. The Obama social security ad says McCain wants to do what Bush did. This is not what McCain now says he wants to do. That's the point. Candidates should argue with what their opponents say they will do, not with what can be inferred from a vote a decade ago.
It's true that in a perfect world politicians would always tell the truth and their claims could always be taken at face value. But the reality is that politicians lie. One of the more reliable ways of evaluating whether a campaign promise is true is to look at a candidate's record. If I'm a single-issue pro-gun voter, Obama isn't my guy because, despite what he says on the stump, his records is clearly anti-gun. Likewise, McCain's sudden conversion to a more regulated financial sector doesn't seem as sincere when you look at what he has said and done before.
If we only evaluate a candidate's "plans" we'll reward not the most consistent, thoughtful, or competent candidate, but the one who is best at telling us what we want to hear. It just so happens that right now, McCain has most to gain from obscuring his record of supporting Bush and deregulation, and so I'm not sure taking him at his word is really so "objective," or a even a good way to look at politics.
--A. Serwer
