A lot has been said about what happened at two McCain events late this afternoon, and the general consensus in the media and elsewhere seems to be that this was the moment that the honorable mavericky decided things had gone too far and took it upon himself to calm down the angry mob. I think that this notion could not be more wrong, and if you ask me this new bit of conventional wisdom might just be the best thing that happened to the McCain campaign all week. Here's why and what I think it means going forward:
First of all a brief recap of what we've seen this week:
Last weekend the McCain campaign launched a sustained effort to smear Obama with character attacks over his supposed ties to Bill Ayers. They've tried to frame it as a question of judgment but well all know that's not what this is really about. The attack was launched in part based off of a piece in the NYT on Saturday detailing the tenuous ties between Obama and Ayers in an attempt at "balance." All of a sudden Gov. Palin became an avid reader of the Times, which is now apparently again considered a legitimate journalistic enterprise after being totally in the tank for Obama. Despite the fact that the article concluded that Obama's relationship with Ayers was anything but close, Palin's reading of it determined that "Barack Obama had been palling around with domestic terrorists." The second part of this attack came in the form of the RNC calling for a review of Obama's donor list because of alleged foreign donations. Couple this with stuff about Obama disrespecting the troops, and the various internet rumors, the invited conclusion of course becomes that Obama is somehow a one man sleeper cell who hates America and is dangerous.
A few days into this line of attack reports started surfacing of supporters at McCain/Palin rallies shouting hateful stuff like "Traitor!" "Treason!" and of course "Kill Him!" (For some really frightening stuff see the blogger interrupted parking lot videos) Eventually some people started to get creeped out by these events, and people started to discuss whether or not there was a line being crossed, and if so who was responsible for it? Various editorials and political commentators picked up on the narrative that these angry mobs were starting to become a bit worrisome, and the question became at point does McCain have to say something about this? That brings us to today. Everyone has seen the video clips of the two town hall events today where John McCain stepped in to "calm things down." Or did he? So finally my point...
In thinking about McCain's "rediscovered conscience" it occurs to me that all the commentary on this seems to be missing one important point about what happened today, and what it means in terms of the continued attacks pushing the Ayers association. All of the examples we've seen over the past few days of hatred being directed at Obama during McCain/Palin rallies have involved random shouts from the crowd which both McCain & Palin refused to acknowledge, today's events were different in that they were town hall events where McCain was directly asked questions by supporters which showcased the vitriol that people have been picking up on. In this situation, with both the man concerned about raising his unborn child in "Barack Obama's America," and the older woman who believed that Obama was an Arab, McCain was engaged in a direct question and answer with the incensed supporter. What options did he really have in how to respond to this?
Previously with the random shouts in the crowd he could ignore them and pretend he didn't hear the hateful stuff, in these cases however he had to give a direct answer; either he accepted the assertions being made in the questioning or he countered them and thus appeared to be "calming down" the crowd. This fact helps explain the odd body language some people have commented about, as well as the subsequent attacks attempting to implicate Michelle Obama in the Ayers stuff, and the campaign press releases painting Obama as attacking legitimately angry working class McCain supporters. If McCain had refused to deny the charges being leveled in a situation which required him to deliver a direct response, that would have been a campaign defining moment and become a HUGE story. McCain couldn't appear to endorse the most extreme smears against Obama, there isn't a legitimate journalist in America who would have backed him up on it.
If today's events had merely involved more random shouts from angry crowds I doubt we would have seen a response from McCain; McCain could have continued to get away with silence on the matter, because so far journalists have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in terms of whether his campaign is knowingly inciting this stuff with their character attacks. According to a New York Times piece on these events posted here earlier, McCain continued with the Ayers line of attack minutes later in the very same town hall where he grabbed the microphone from the woman, that indicates to me that this definitely wasn't some glimpse of "the old McCain" we saw in these clips, or some moment of moral awareness but rather McCain making the only choice he had in answering those particular questioners.
Fortunately for McCain the way this has been perceived and covered, buys him some breathing room with the media with regard to this issue, just when the narrative was forming that he'd stepped over the line with his attacks this week; in fact many of them are already opining about how this was the old honorable mavericky McCain doing the right thing. Some people are wondering if McCain now risks alienating the base he's worked so hard to placate, or what he has left if he's going to tell people that an Obama presidency is not something to fear? But they make a faulty assumption, McCain wasn't admonishing his base nor was he admitting any fault; the Ayers attack, others like it and worse aren't going anywhere,not tomorrow, not next week. McCain was just answering these questions the way anyone who wasn't intent on committing campaign suicide would have, he simply can't come out and endorse blatantly incendiary rumors about Obama. I think there is an important distinction that is being missed in the analysis of what happened today and in this instance, McCain might just have scored himself a bit of a lucky break, and it could allow him to get away with the ugliness of his character assassination a little bit longer.