McCain Campaign Declares National "Lipstick On A Pig" Emergency

Barack Obama recently compared John McCain's calling himself an agent of change to "putting lipstick on a pig." The comparison was entirely accurate, given that "the maverick" has voted with President Bush over 90% of the time and offers nothing new in terms of war, health care, tax cuts for billionaires, reproductive rights and other critical issues.

Because a McCain victory offers the nation, in effect, a third Bush term, it's no wonder that Republican campaign manager Rick Davis stated that the contest is about personalities, not issues (see post below, 9/7/08). It's also no wonder that Sarah Palin's slick, snarky comedy routine of a speech at the Republican National Convention ridiculed Obama instead of seriously presenting where the McCain campaign wants to take the country. But what could Palin say when the campaign doesn't want to take the country anywhere else but where it's been for the past disastrous eight years?

So it was no surprise when the McCain campaign pounced on Obama's "lipstick" remark, stating that the Democratic candidate was comparing the pig to Palin, who stated at the RNC that a soccer mom was a pit bull with lipstick.

Obama was clearly commenting on McCain's political image with an old expression that McCain himself used to describe Hillary Clinton's health care campaign.

With two wars, rising unemployment and home foreclosures, and millions without health care, this is what the McCain campaign offers us. It follows other pressing issues raised by the campaign and its supporters: lapel pins, Britney and Paris, the middle name "Hussein," Obama's Muslim father, Michelle's supposed lack of patriotism and the "terrorist fist jab"–the last a term coined, naturally, by a Fox News anchor.

And is anyone surprised that former acting governor of Massachusetts Jane Swift, a member of the Palin Truth Squad, suggested that Obama was also calling his opponents "old rotten fish" when he said, "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's going to stink after eight years"?

Ironic, that last name "Swift." It brings to mind the operatives who went under the name "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," whose mission it was to smear John Kerry's service in Vietnam and distract the nation from questions regarding George Bush's questionable service in the Texas National Guard.

There's another irony in the names "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth" and "Palin Truth Squad." How come whenever Republicans form a "truth" committee, one can be sure that its purpose is to spread lies? I'm reminded of the Bizarro World in Superman comics, "a planet where alarm clocks dictate when to go to sleep, ugliness is beautiful and the world's greatest hero is a chalk- faced duplicate of Superman."

This Bizarro World, in which the Republicans engage in the politics of personal destruction while stating that they're merely stating the truth, is a recurring feature of our presidential politics. In the video above, Obama points out the corrosive nonsense we're exposed to every four years despite pressing national issues. If he doesn't respond to these attacks, he looks ineffective, just as John Kerry did. So Obama was right to respond effectively–yet he's still caught in a dilemma. He spent his time refuting the latest phony controversy instead of talking about real national issues–which is exactly what the Republicans don't want to talk about. How many election cycles must we have before Republican tactics are immediately seen for the ugly diversions that they are?