Slate writer finds McCain's acts to be worse than those he condemns:
But in Michigan, the McCain campaign initiated advocacy calls about Bush that were far worse than Bush's South Carolina calls about McCain in a number of respects. These calls were not merely negative, as Bush's calls about McCain were, but also deceptive and misleading. Instead of hearing the voice of human being who identified himself as from the Bush campaign, recipients in Michigan heard a recorded voice than implied the existence of a phony organization called "Catholic Voter Alert."
Worse, the text of the message distorted the substance of Bush's actions. "John McCain, a pro-life senator, has strongly criticized this anti-Catholic bigotry, while Gov. Bush has stayed silent while seeking the support of Bob Jones University," the recording said. It's true that Bush stayed silent about anti-Catholic bigotry while he was at Bob Jones University. But to say he "has stayed silent" is a significant distortion. Bush criticized Bob Jones' racial policies later the same day, after his visit, and has since slammed BJU's anti-Catholicism at every opportunity.
The other ethical difference between these two episodes is that when accused, the Bush campaign promptly accepted responsibility and released the script for its South Carolina calls. On Election Day in Michigan, McCain spokesman Howard Opinksy denied that his campaign was behind the "Catholic Voter Alert" messages. I don't think that Opinksy was intentionally lying, but the truth is equally damning. McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis--who also played a role in Bob Dole's negative advocacy calls against his primary opponents in the 1996 campaign--kept the McCain phone-banking operation secret, so secret that even other high campaign officials didn't know about it. Even now, the McCain campaign refuses to come clean about its calls. Despite repeated requests, the campaign won't release the scripts for the two other advocacy calls it acknowledges making in Michigan. McCain's only defense is that Bush has been doing more or less the same thing as he has by not demanding that his ally Pat Robertson cease making calls attacking McCain supporter Warren Rudman as "a vicious bigot." But while the Robertson calls about Rudman are obnoxious, they aren't anonymous and there's nothing technically inaccurate in them. I don't think that Rudman's saying that some members of the religious right are bigots makes him a bigot, but the charge is a matter of opinion, not fact.
McCain displays a similarly egregious double standard when it comes to his contention that the Bush campaign courted bigots in South Carolina. All the time he was blasting Bush for campaigning at Bob Jones, McCain himself was paying $20,000 a month to South Carolina political consultant Richard Quinn, a neo-Confederate revanchist who is one of the leaders of the state's pro-flag faction. Quinn is editor in chief of Southern Partisan, a magazine that publishes apologias for slavery and sells paraphernalia celebrating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Quinn himself once advocating voting for the "maverick" David Duke.
When asked about this background on Meet the Press the day after the South Carolina primary, McCain didn't distance himself from Quinn. Instead, he professed ignorance about Quinn's writings, just as Bush did about Bob Jones' policies, and argued, as Bush also did about Bob Jones, that Ronald Reagan had done the same thing he had. But where Bush criticized Bob Jones in stringent terms after the fact, McCain continues to describe Quinn as "a man of integrity" who isn't responsible for what appears in his own magazine. Though McCain's Richard Quinn connection is arguably worse than Bush's Bob Jones faux pas, it never turned into a big deal for one simple reason: The press let McCain get away with it, even as it held Bush's feet to the fire on Bob Jones.
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But you might ask what kind of "intolerance" McCain is talking about. When it comes to the only variety that social conservatives express openly these days--intolerance of gays--Bauer is just as guilty as Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, the two social conservatives McCain criticized by name. In fact, Bauer may be worse. Last October, Falwell invited Mel White, an openly gay minister who ghostwrote Falwell's autobiography in the 1980s, to speak at his Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. Bauer's organization, the Family Research Council, decried the visit. In a statement issued at the time, the organization asserted that it "continues to have concerns about meetings of this nature." In a similar vein, Bauer recently asserted that the decision by a Vermont court to allow gay marriage was "worse than terrorism." Pat Robertson sounds tame by comparison. The worst thing he has said recently is that homosexuals are big in Scotland. The worst thing Falwell has said is that Tinky Winky looks like one of them.
The oddest moment in McCain's speech was the blanket amnesty he granted to a few favored social conservatives in addition to Bauer. "Chuck Colson, head of Prison Fellowship, is saving men from a lifetime behind bars by bringing them the good news of redemption," McCain asserted. "James Dobson, who does not support me, has devoted his life to rebuilding America's families."
It's clear why McCain exempted Dobson. Dobson has been Bauer's mentor and sponsor. Dobson's organization, Focus on the Family, has been the chief financial supporter of Bauer's organization, the Family Research Council. Though there was something of a rift between Dobson and Bauer after Bauer declared his presidential candidacy, Bauer is eager to mend it. It's a fair surmise that Bauer asked McCain to give Dobson a pass in his indictment as a personal favor. But in granting this favor, McCain undercut his otherwise compelling thesis. Dobson, whose efforts to "rebuild" families includes a efforts to "cure" homosexuals, is even harder to defend than Bauer. A couple of years ago, Dobson threatened to lead a right-wing walkout from the Republican Party because Tom DeLay and Dick Armey are too moderate for his taste.
What's more, Dobson has slandered McCain personally. When Bauer endorsed McCain, Dobson issued a nasty statement, attacking McCain in bitter and personal terms. "McCain ... has sought and received enormous financial and political support from the Log Cabin Republicans and other homosexual activists," Dobson said. "The senator is being touted by the media as a man of principle, yet he was involved with other women while married to his first wife, and was implicated in the so-called Keating scandal with four other senators. ... The senator reportedly has a violent temper and can be extremely confrontational and profane when angry. These red flags about Senator McCain's character are reminiscent of the man who now occupies the White House," Dobson concluded. Robertson and Falwell have been both milder and more substantive in their criticisms of McCain.
This is not McCain's first burst of selective outrage. All the time he has been blasting away at George W. for visiting Bob Jones University without protesting its policies, McCain has been giving a free ride to the man who was his most valuable ally in South Carolina, Rep. Lindsey Graham. Graham accepted an honorary degree from Bob Jones himself. When Brit Hume pointed out this inconvenient fact while Graham was denouncing Bush's visit to Bob Jones on Fox News Channel, Graham used the same defense Bush gave before he changed his mind and apologized to Cardinal O'Connor: Lots of other Republicans did the same thing before everyone suddenly woke up one day and decided it was unacceptable. "I was invited to go, I went, and I'll accept responsibility for going," Graham said. "People like Strom Thurmond and Bob Dole have gone."
In other words, McCain's problem isn't with all "agents of intolerance" trying to exert influence within the Republican Party. It's just with the agents of intolerance who don't happen to be helpful John McCain. http://slate.msn.com/code/BallotBox/BallotBox.asp?Show=2/29/00&idMessage=4709
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