McCain Campaign: A House of Cards

The truth of the house of cards is that it always looks sturdy. It looks like a regular house. Or at least like a strangely-patterned one. It looks like it is strong, well-built, and of appropriate significance—until you blown on it, sneeze near it, or say, walk on the floor within a 20 feet of it.

The truth of the Republican smear machine is that they’ve built the McCain-Palin ticket like a house of cards. Our brains tell us to not trust them (for so many reasons, but let’s just say this: hypocrisy), our guts tell us to worry about them, and yet our hearts seem won over by the tails of gallantry, self-sacrifice, and “realness”. At least that’s what most of us are left with. The corporate media feels comfortable pretending as if they play no part in this, even though they spent the entire Democratic convention trying to expose some underground plot by Hillary’s secret army and the entire Republican convention fawning over the supposed “Tina Fey lookalike”. And this week we had the first public interview by Gov. Sarah Palin, which will do more to inspire confidence in the status quo than it will expose Palin’s true character. A letter circulating around the Internet, written by a Wasilla, Alaska native that knows her, is certainly doing a better job of that than Charlie Gibson seems capable of.

In truth, McCain-Palin are offering us very little reason to support them. In fact, in last night’s event, John McCain was asked about the negative tone of the campaign so far, with the moderator stopping short of nailing McCain on setting that tone. McCain then proceeded to put the blame on Obama, as he has over the last week and a half saying “if he had only agreed to the town hall meetings I suggested.” I don’t think I would have gotten away with that at home if I made a mess and blamed it on my sister: who was in the other room at the time. But the worst of it is that McCain actually stated that the way we know how tactics work is the way people vote; that the winning strategy determines future campaign strategies. What McCain all but admits is that he is running an almost entirely negative and schizophrenic campaign this year because a) it worked in the past and b) if it works again, Republicans will use it in 2012.

But here is where the house of cards analogy comes in: the media is obsessed with polls showing McCain and Obama in a dead heat (despite ample reason to doubt the veracity of the polling, especially an over-representation of Republicans polled in the recent batch) and with the Palin and convention bump. At the same time, they are reluctantly reporting on Palin’s baggage and occasionally pointing out one of McCain’s lies. BUT, they seem to be tied to this need to not be seen as picking on McCain, so they have to either tread lightly or makeup a story to run about Obama to “balance” it out. As of today, the corporate media are the unwitting accomplices to McCain’s lie, lie, suck up, and lie some more strategy. The pessimists in us want to give up—the corporate media isn’t going to do their jobs…unless they do.

What happens to the McCain campaign when somebody gives him the tough questions and makes him answer them, not with lies or pander (The McCain robot’s seemingly only two settings) but with accountability for what he says and for what those around him say. What happens if reporters are actually allowed access to Palin in the way expected of any other candidate? She’s been in the spotlight for a week and a half and has already lied enough times to fulfill an entire term in the House of Representatives under Tom Delay. What happens when the corporate media actually wakes up? All it would take is the slightest movement and all of the cards come crashing to the table.