McCain should put some lipstick on his misleading and dishonest ad
Wow. I don’t pay attention to the campaign for one day and look what I missed. I just heard about the lipstick kerfuffle this morning. Now that I have seen the McCain ad, I have to say that I am disappointed that his campaign went so far to make this a serious issue. What bothers me is that is was perfectly clear what Obama was saying and it had nothing to do with Sarah Palin. The icing on the cake was the ad itself, in which it said on the screen, “Barack Obama on Sarah Palin” before launching in to the clip of the lipstick comment. That is misleading and dishonest. Not a great moment for the McCain campaign. They compounded their mistake by trotting out our former governor Jane Swift as part of their Truth Squad. I have to agree 100% with National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuro,
Don’t they realize that this harping on ambiguous slights is what people hate about political correctness? It was bad enough when liberals were trying to destroy Palin. Now Republicans are trashing her brand. They’re undermining the basis of her appeal as a different, tougher kind of female politician. Today has been worse than wasted.
Having Jane Swift lead the McCain campaign’s Palin Truth Squad is an additional mistake. It’s not just that she was an incompetent and unpopular governor of Massachusetts, although she was, and had nothing like Palin’s credentials as a reformer. Her administration was a failure in significant part because of her inability to walk the line between public and private, work and family. She was the last female governor before Palin to be prominent for being pregnant in office, and she made a hash of things, using state aides as babysitters. Couldn’t the campaign have found someone who wasn’t such a counter-example to Palin?
Politics, Sarah Palin | Kevin | 
September 10, 2008 7:23 pm
Kevin,
If you watch Obama’s gestures he was clearly making a ding against Palin. Watch other clips when he’s making a “joke” and his gestures were identical.
“Lipstick” took on a new meaning and connotation after the RNC convention. He was trying to be clever and knew exactly what he was doing.
Greg W.
Hi Greg,
Nice to hear from you! I guess I don’t think he’s all that clever.:) This strikes me as a mountain out of a molehill with real danger for McCain to over play his hand, if he hasn’t already.
Kevin
I was more offended by Biden telling someone at a recent speaking engagement to stand up when they were in a wheelchair. This guy isn’t even a master of the obvious.
Greg W. has it 100% correct. Palins lipstick comment was an off the cuff joke to fill in while the teleprompter was dead. Obama’s comment was CAREFULLY scripted. Do I think his campaign thought it would be a good idea to compare Palin to a pig? I think Obama and his staff are deviously skillful enough to get a message across without saying the actual words, sending a subliminal shot and providing themselves plausible deniability. Obama’s snickers as he began his delivery, and his audience’s chuckles before he delivered the punch line demonstrate that Barry knew that he was giving a poke in the ete to SP, and his adoring fans got it and appreciated it. The cowardice of this kind of oratory is what I find disgusting. Having said that, it is hard for anyone in the mainstream to call BHO on it without seeming petty, which is the genius of the comment; McCain really should have left it to the bloggers to fight it out, but I understand the compulsion to try to make the point.
[...] spent an hour talking about the week that was in lipstick politics. As I said on the blog earlier in the week, I thought McCain overplayed his hand, went too far and produced a dishonest [...]
One thing is abundantly clear since Sarah Palin was named as McCain’s running mate. The “tolerant” party was lightning quick to begin their attack on Palin. If there is one class the “tolerant” party hates (and what they consider a defector) it is a female conservative.