Legal Commentary

The Tin Ear

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

Faced with reporters calling him on his dishonesty in his latest campaign commercial, McCain doubles down and stonewalls. See Kos, Who’s Lying? John McCain or Andrea Mitchell?.

In my opinion this is a very serious error: the political press will stick to its ‘objective’ he said/she said approach no matter how ridiculous the issue except for facts they personally witness. You can bamboozle the press with fake numbers if you can find one economist to vouch for them. You can say your goal is a balanced budget and world peace while you propose huge deficits and wars (worked for Bush!). But you can’t tell the press not to trust their lying eyes.

I’m surprised that McCain has learned to take the press so much for granted that he thinks they will sit still even for this. I think it may reach up to bite him — at least until he makes nice again.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on July 30, 2008 (boomark / email).