My six-year-old is one tough cookie. The other day he was looking for his shoes, and I told him that they were downstairs.
"No they aren't."
"They're down there, I just saw them."
"No."
"Go look."
"Oh, okay." He's goes and looks, and says, "See, they're not here."
He is standing two feet away from his bright red pair of Crocs. I point. He frowns.
"Well, they weren't there before, I didn't leave them there. Someone else must have put them there."
Any parent will recognize this as normal six-year-old behavior. The problem is that some of us never outgrow it (I for one must confess to the occasional bout of foul-mouthed rage at the imaginary industrious little gremlin who occasionally sneaks into my toolbox and steals my screwdriver, only to leave on my workbench...). But we deserve better from those who would presume to lead our nation.
I had to think of my son's shoes yesterday when I heard the once dignified Senator McCain defend the lies in his recent campaign ads, insisting "Actually they are not lies,and have you seen some of the ads that are running against me?" His campaign manager has also stood firm, claiming to have proof of everything they have said. Those shoes, he would have us believe, just aren't there.
The McCain campaign has adopted what one might call the tough cookie strategy: be stubborn, keep insisting that what they have said is true, and hope that the press will drop the matter in next news round in favor of something more interesting. But the press must not let this drop. If McCain has proof that Obama actually has supported "comprehensive sex education for kindergartners," let him produce it. If they can explain exactly when and where Obama made the claims about Palin that they allude to in their infamous distortion of a piece on FactCheck.com, let them explain it. And if they can't, the press and the public need to keep pressing the point.
McCain bills himself as a straight talker, and has promised a clean campaign. Now he has been caught lying. He owes us either the proof or an apology.
And preferably something more gracious than the petulant "Oh fine," I finally winkled out of my son.
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1 comment:
McCain is just assuming that if he keeps slinging mud, some of it will stick. He learned that mudslinging pays from his 2000 primary campaign, when karl rove used a phony poll to spread the rumor that McCain's dark-skinned adopted child was actually his with a black mistress. Now he's using the same tactics that he was so mad about back then. What a hypocrite.
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