Democratic Underground - Round 3: The Prosecution of John McCain

Do you know the warm progress under the stars?
Do you know we exist?
Have you forgotten the keys to the Kingdom?
Have you been borne yet & are you alive?
Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests

We need great golden copulations
The fathers are cackling in trees of the forest
Our mother is dead in the sea
Do you know we are being led to slaughters by placid admirals
& that fat slow generals are getting obscene on young blood
Do you know we are ruled by TV?
--James Douglas Morrison; An American Prayer

Democrats across the nation are eagerly anticipating the third round of the 2008 presidential debates tonight. Barack Obama and John McCain will meet at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, squaring off in a debate in which the two will be seated at a table with moderator Bob Schieffer, of CBS. This promises to be the most satisfying of the series of debates for Democrats.

It is expected that part of the discussion will focus upon the McCain campaign’s gutter tactics, in which they have attacked Senator Obama personally. These attacks have been conducted by McCain, Sarah Palin, and others associated with the republican campaign. There was some expectation that McCain would push these attacks in the second round; the fact that he didn’t do so spoke as loudly as anything that he did say.

Since then, both Obama and Joseph Biden have questioned why McCain failed to address the "concerns" about Obama that had become his campaign’s central focus. Senator Biden, in fact, threw down the gauntlet, saying that in the neighborhood he grew up in, if you had something to say about someone, you said it to their face.

McCain is on the hot seat tonight. He’s been called out. The topic will be on the table. Exactly how it will be raised – perhaps by Bob Schieffer – remains to be seen. And the manner in which each candidate will approach the topic is unknown. In light of this, I thought it might be interesting to look at a few of the factors that we do know about, and to discuss how they will likely come into play this evening.

The Obama campaign has run a surprisingly tight ship throughout the primary contest and general election. Their inner circle has been able to take advantage of their ability to be impenetrable, which is difficult for several reasons. The first is that almost every campaign is able to plant "spies" at some level of the opposition’s operation. And that combines with a second factor, which is the tendency of professional campaign operatives to access power by trading information. So it becomes progressively harder for the inner circle of a national campaign to maintain secrecy as a campaign moves towards Election Day.

The spread of information usually follows a path from the inner circle, or "tier one," to the second tier, then the third, which shares it in a select manner. Thus, for example, I can say with some confidence that John McCain is hoping that Bob Schieffer brings up the controversies associated with the republican campaign tactics, and that he can then say that they involve topics where citizens have "real concerns" about Obama’s past. McCain does not want to take ownership of the gutter tactics, but still hopes to exploit them.

Exactly how Barack Obama will respond is unknown. In fact, he may put the issue on the table, before Schieffer does. The only people who know for sure are his tier one inner circle, and they have not allowed that information to be spread. Anyone else who says they know what Obama has planned is kidding themselves. We can only speculate.

To appreciate how rare this is, it is interesting to consider the grand jury investigation of the Plame scandal. Grand jury investigations are by nature secretive, and the Plame one was especially so. Yet older DUers will recall that in the infamous "Plame Threads," I shared some information in 2004 that didn’t become part of the public record until the Scooter Libby trial. Also of interest is that some other internet sites reported some "information," which proved to be inaccurate. By no coincidence, this brings us to an important tactic of political campaigns: the spreading of information, misinformation, and disinformation.

"Information" comes in the form of facts. However, all political campaigns worth their salt know that a "fact" is not always equal to the truth. A fact can be used to distort the truth; a good example is McCain’s saying that Obama voted against funding the troops in Iraq. The truth is that both Obama and McCain each cast a vote that can be used to imply they opposed funding the troops, if the "fact" is taken out of context. But any time a campaign has to explain a previous action, they are on the defensive, or "losing."

"Misinformation" is the spreading of untruths, also know as lies. This tends to happen in discussions that involve one or more uninformed people put nonsense on the table. We see this daily on the cable and network news shows. The goal of misinformation is to communicate irrational and illogical messages with reality-challenged people. It is one of the greatest sources of frustration for those who are well-informed, because in discussions taking place anywhere from the work place to the Sunday news shows, utter falsehoods are promoted as having the same value as the truth.

"Disinformation" is a tactic that was originally most closely associated with intelligence operations in times of international conflict. It began to seep into domestic politics after WW2, and was the favored tactic of the Nixon campaign/administration. Disinformation was the language that was spoken by the Reagan and Bush1 administrations, as well. And no operation has engaged in such an outrageous war on truth as that of the Bush-Cheney administration. Again, it is no coincidence that several of the professional liars who were engaged in the disinformation campaign that brought our nation to war with Iraq – which included the Plame scandal – are involved in the John McCheney campaign. They have attempted to appeal to the ignorance of the uninformed and misinformed voters.

What can we expect tonight? I will not speculate on exactly what Barack Obama will say. But I suspect that his approach will be that of a good prosecutor, putting John McCain on the witness stand. McCain, of course, will attempt to squirm his way out of this, and deny the ownership of other people’s lies. But Obama will focus on forcing McCain to take personal responsibility for his own actions. John McCain will become a prisoner of his own campaign, as well as of his own personality.

In the first round, we saw McCain’s disrespect for Obama, when he refused to look at him. In the second round, we saw McCain’s strong dislike of Obama as an individual. As late as May, McCain believed that he could beat Obama in the general election, based on his belief that Obama lacked the experience needed to be President. Tonight, I think we will see the inner rage that defines John McCain exposed in ugly outbursts.

Enjoy the debate. I look forward to the discussions here on DU tonight.

Your friend,
H2O Man

Round 3: The Prosecution of John McCain [View All]