Less passive voice, more cowbell. I read the article and puked a little bit in my mouth for the way that ole 'Straight shootin' McSame just had to take the low road to be heard. Does Bobo conveniently forget that these are standard republican strategies? Somehow doubt that.

As I've said elsewhere, Brooks is in effect saying that McCain is sacrificing his supposedly core values in an attempt to win the presidency. I'm sure Brooks would not care to characterize it in this fashion, but that's really what it is. Like pretty much everyone else in the GOP, McCain's will toss aside his principles like a used paper towel in order to win an election.

Faint praise, indeed, from Brooks. Seems as if several Republican media stalwarts aren't exactly plumping for McCain.

And the Georgia maneuver signals grave danger, making McCain even more vulnerable to a Goldwater mushroom cloud campaign.

Cue John McCain doing Chris Rock's "Blame it on the media" routine...

If he can't take on the bloggers, then he sure as hell won't be able to run the government honorably.

But, of course, the whole premise is ridiculous. He's a nasty Republican who "will do anything to embarrass a Democrat." That's always been the real McCain.

For him, this is the fun part.

jeebus, brooks puts just enough faux sincerity into every one of his columns to mask his true partisanship, and kevin calls it admirable. Success!!
This is not faint praise from Brooks, it is pure spin, designed to perpetuate the honorable man bullshit when it is clearly no longer warranted.

... it is pure spin, designed to perpetuate the honorable man bullshit when it is clearly no longer warranted.

As if it ever was.

The column illustrates why the most effective single line Obama surrogates can use against McCain is "This is not the McCain I knew and respected," delivered sadly with an undertone of outrage. Several surrogates (Jim Webb, Wesley Clark) used this to good effect when McCain first started down this road, but they seem to have dropped it. It effectively exploits almost all McCain's weaknesses -

-- for right wingers - does he really mean these new positions?
-- for independents - was he ever really a moderate
-- for all voters - is he losing it?

McCain's 'on message' strategy is tailor made to the limited attention span and analytic capacity of the 'low information' voter. Obama is poorly positioned to go after this demographic, and it would seem artificial if he did, so his surrogates are the best weapon to use here, but they need message discipline and an attack line designed to penetrate the smoke and mirros which McCain is effectively deploying now.

Kevin wrote: "If McCain is running a campaign based on personal destruction, he's doing it because that's the choice he made."

McCain made this choice because he realizes that an onslaught of smears and character assassination against Obama is his only hope of getting close enough to steal the election.

And with the help of the handful of giant corporations who own and control America's mass media, who want Their Man McCain to be the next president, it will probably work.

If John McCain can't stand up to Kevin Drum, Ezra Klein, the Daily Kos crowd, and the other bloggers, how will he stand up to Osama bin Laden, North Korea, Iran, George Soros, and Rosie O'Donnell?

McCain v. Obama = Sheriff of Nottingham v. Robin Hood

Re: "honorable man," so often invoked about McCain. I want to hear McCain define honor. Define the word.

The point is, in his hands, it's just a thought-terminating cliche.

McCain and his advisers have been compelled to adjust to the hostile environment around them. They have been compelled, at least in their telling, to abandon the campaign they had hoped to run.

Look, if you really have ethics and honor you're never "compelled" to do anything. You do what you feel is right, and damn the consequences.

It is the only way he can get the networks to pay attention.

Again, if the only way a truly honorable person can get the networks to pay attention is to act dishonorably, then he simply doesn't get the networks to pay attention. If, however, you are willing to abandon your ethics merely for the sake of some media attention, then that means that you never really had those ethics in the first place. Ideals that are abandoned for expediency's sake aren't ideals -- they're window dressing.

The column is the equivalent of the mano morta, the ‘dead hand’ — a blatant ass-grab, when, if you’re caught, you look at your hand with haughty disdain, as if to say ‘now whose hand is that, and however did it get there?'

All along, he's been doing, or aiding and abetting, the very thing he 'denounces' here. He is 'the system' he decries.

Kevin,

Wow you actually read David Brooks. He stopped writing anything worth reading at least 3 years ago. The guy's a total a$$

jeebus, brooks puts just enough faux sincerity into every one of his columns to mask his true partisanship, and kevin calls it admirable. Success!!

No kidding. That's not Bobo being surprisingly evenhanded; that's Brooks throwing a miniature bone to reality so he can continue writing his shameless Republican apologia.

Brooks is a conservative who admires McCain

Now there are two credible qualities...

America needs to ditch that zero, and get herself a hero.

Someone really ought to make a ring-tone out of the McCain cackle, though...

How can we trust McCain to win the war on terror if he can't even beat the system?

My friends, I have reluctantly decided to run a campaign based on the politics of personal destruction. The politics of my own personal destruction. My friends, no one will respect me by the time I am done.

Hey! this is exactly the point "No Country for Old Men" and "The Dark night" make. Bad guys are people who don't believe their actions are up to them. Bad guys are people with jaded, reckless philosophies.

I think of this everytime I hear "Who could've predicted..." or some trope about "personal responsibility" being the foundation conservatism's built upon.

*

what utter horseshit, along with david broder saying mean old obama forced mccain to do the nasty. what are they thinking, and why are they paid for thinking it?

your pal,
blake

Stop me before I smear again?

More drivel from the pundit of drivel. When has Brooks EVER written anything cogent?

"I want to hear McCain define honor."

I think it has something to do with being shot-down and seeing a cross in the sand. Oh, and with having a comprehensive economic policy.

McCain has embraced Big Brother (the Republican machine). He's now supporting torture, extraordinary rendition, perpetual warfare, unchecked government authority to spy on citizens, and most of all Newspeak.

The Straight Talk Express lies about Obama wanting to raise YOUR taxes. This is a lie unless you happen to make $250,000 a year. So he's only lying to 98% of the population (or whatever percentage doesn't make that much), I guess.

It's clear how fast a country falls apart when the ruling party embraces lying. The pro-Republican Fox News using "fair and balanced" as their slogan fits right in...

C'mon, it's the new media narrative: "Sure McCain is running an absolute gutter campaign comprised of baseless attacks and random incoherent statements, but it's not his fault. McCain isn't responsible for McCain's campaign. Or his own words and actions."

It's those damn kids, they wouldn't get off his lawn, now they've bum rushed his front door, taken him hostage, and are running the kind of campaign that McCain would allegedly be disgusted by.

http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/

John McCain is verminous. I don't give a fuck if he spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. He deserved it, since he was bombing civilians at the time. It's too bad he got out.

The GOP has made this campaign personal and I think Obama ought to throw anything and everything at the senile old leper - including the kitchen sink. He cheats on his wife, he is a traitor, he caused the fire on the USS Forrestal that killed 127 men - everything!

And supposed conservative voices -- believers in accountability one would think -- are reducing to arguing that McCain was "compelled" to start lying while running as the original maverick.

Many conservatives have recognized that the Big Brother Republican path is not the right road. Let's hope that Brooks continues to recognize that the straight talking maverick is no such thing, and that Brooks considers the system that "compels" such behavior. A media establishment that condones lying, or excuses it, is a crappy media establishment...

I have always said that despite his nice guy shtick, when election time rolls around David Brooks becomes a reliable, shiv-with-a-smile attack dog for the Republican Party. Here he pulls off the neat trick of admitting that McCain has thrown out all his high-minded ideals of running a post-partisan campaign focused on policy and instead is running like any other politician, to win at all cost, but that he had no choice because the press would not cover the post-partisan campaign, or the press was only interested in Obama, or that Obama refused to debate McCain, etc. In other words, it is not McCains fault he had to run like Bush did in 2000.

...the passive-voice construction of the entire column ...

The use of passive voice was forced upon Mr. Brooks by the system.

Like pretty much everyone else in the GOP, McCain's will toss aside his principles like a used paper towel in order to win an election.

Posted by: bucky on August 19, 2008 at 12:45 PM |

Last time I checked it was the One who was tossing aside his long held "principles" like to public financing of elections, gun control and oh yes, a complete withdrawal from Iraq as well as long time associates like Rev. Wright and his own grandmother under the bus when they became an embarrassment to him. Was all this done simply "to win an election" or for something more noble?

"i'm john mccain...and i approve this campaign."

"Last time I checked . . . ."

Posted by: Chicounsel

The only "checking" you've been doing involves a reach for your zipper.

Isn't Brooks really saying that McCain can't get any traction when addressing the issues of the day? Is that because he doesn't have unique solutions to our problems but is more comfortable with the status quo? Just wondering.

David Brooks was the first I recall (years ahead of Frum and Hitchens) to proclaim that the widespread derision of Paul Wolfowitz was based on anti-semitism. Others traced it to PW being the dumbest man on the planet damned out of his own mouth for gems like how the occupation of Iraq would be like the occupation of France after WW II. Though we are only in the naughts, this seems to have legs to survive as the dumbest thing said in the 21st century.

If A successfully trashes B I should be able to vote against B, directly and honestly, voting against the trashee without having to vote for the trasher, reducing the benefits of the trashing. A NO column and the highest net yes wins would provide voters the ability to vote how they really feel, not the one size fits all yes only ballot that restricts voters from 50% of their freedom of expression on the ballot. "You can have any color car you want as long as it's black." it's said Henry Ford claimed. That's what the yes only ballot tells voters. One of the most frequent comments this election cycle is akin to, "I can't vote for my party's nominee but have difficulty justifying voting for the other party's nominee." The NO column would releive them of that dilemma.

you are a moron.

I'll say this with as much aplomb and eloquence as I can muster.

David Brooks is a weenie.

Regarding the media's tendency to not hold the honorable Senator McCain responsible for the behavior of his campaign: the Cossacks work for the Tsar.

Regarding the media's tendency to not hold the honorable Senator McCain responsible for the behavior of his campaign: the Cossacks work for the Tsar.

Look what you made me do!

Yeah, bitch! Look what you made him do!

Kevin: "Brooks is a conservative who admires McCain, so I suppose even this level of criticism is sort of admirable."

Um, do you actually not realize that this is Brooks' way of making excuses for McCain's slime? 'He wuz forced!'.

Not much left to say, great comments above, except that I hope for the sake of pedestrians everywhere that Brooks doesn't drive a Corvette.

Comparing himself to Winston Churchill in one of his ads? Are you kidding, Insane McCain? Why is he always playing the heroic suffering prizoner card. It gets sickening after awhile.

You mean the GOP no lnioger stands for personal responsibility and a distate for moral relativism?

I do love how Brooks, a typical conservative champion of personal responsibility, argues that everyone in the US is responsible for the tenor and tone of McCain's campaign...everyone, that is, but McCain and his staff.

Ah, the Shakespearean tragedy of John McCain. forced by circumstances and overweening pride to kill the honor the old McCain surely believed he had.

I'm just waiting for a Mark Antony oration "... for John McCain is surely an honorable man..."

And if the ballot included a NO column, as it should, and the highest net yes wins I could vote against the trashee without having to vote for the trasher. An honest vote. How refreshing. What's to be afraid of being able to vote how you really feel. Many obviously don't like one more than they don't like the other. They need a way to express that honestly on the ballot.

Let someone try to argue that inequality, lack of opportunity, discrimination, poor education systems or any of the other social burdens under which the poor labor are to blame for crime rates, teen pregnancy and drug addiction and Brooks would howl about personal choices and responsibility. A rich old white guy chooses to run a slimey, crypto-racist campaign and suddenly society is to blame.

What a crock.

Many obviously don't like one more than they don't like the other. They need a way to express that honestly on the ballot.
Posted by: Valjean

... OR ... you can accept that Hillary is not the nominee, get the fuck over yourself, and vote for the black guy despite how much that scares you.