Joe Klein
AC360° Contributor
TIME Columnist

Politics has always been lousy with blather and chicanery. But there are rules and traditions too. In the early weeks of the general-election campaign, a consensus has grown in the political community — a consensus that ranges from practitioners like Karl Rove to commentators like, well, me — that John McCain has allowed his campaign to slip the normal bounds of political propriety.

The situation has gotten so intense that we in the media have slipped our normal rules as well. Usually when a candidate tells something less than the truth, we mince words. We use euphemisms like mendacity and inaccuracy ... or, as the Associated Press put it, "McCain's claims skirt facts."

But increasing numbers of otherwise sober observers, even such august institutions as the New York Times editorial board, are calling John McCain a liar. You might well ask, What has McCain done to deserve this? What unwritten rules did he break? Are his transgressions of degree or of kind?

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Joe Klein
AC360° Contributor
TIME columnist

Sarah Palin has arrived in our midst with the force of a rocket-propelled grenade. She has boosted John McCain's candidacy and overwhelmed the presidential process in a way that no vice-presidential pick has since Thomas Eagleton did the precise opposite — sinking his sponsor, George McGovern, in 1972.

Obviously, something beyond politics is happening here. We don't really know Palin as a politician yet, whether she is wise or foolhardy, substantive or empty. Our fascination with her — and it is a nonpartisan phenomenon — is driven by something more primal. The Palin surge illuminates the mythic power of the Republican Party's message since the advent of Ronald Reagan.

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Joe Klein
AC360° Contributor
TIME columnist

As I predicted earlier yesterday, Sarah Palin did just fine.

In fact, she delivered a brilliant speech. It was a classic Republican speech–written by Matthew Scully of the Bush speechwriting shop–chock full of conservative populism, a cultural "torpedo" as Chris Mathews is saying as I write this, aimed directly at Barack and Michelle Obama. She was far more effective, using fewer words than the over-the-top Rudy Giuliani, in tearing down the Obama candidacy. There was not much substance–issues don't matter, remember?–and her description of Obama's policies, particularly his tax policies, was quite inaccurate.

But that hardly matters. Palin established herself as a major-league performer, a very effective messenger for the perennial Republican themes of low taxes and strong defense. And a new theme–government reform–that changes the terrain of the election and will have to be forcefully countered by the Democrats. Obama will have to be every bit as sharp–and down to earth–as he was in his speech last week as this goes forward.

Last week, when Bill Clinton began to speak, I thought: this turns this lugubrious convention around. I thought the same as Palin spoke tonight. John McCain, not nearly the speaker that Palin seems to be, has a tough act to follow tomorrow night.

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Joe Klein
AC360° Contributor
TIME columnist

The woman, a venture capitalist from the Denver area, looked a bit like Cindy McCain, and so it was disconcerting when she announced, in a focus group of undecided voters conducted by the Republican pollster Frank Luntz, that she had decided she just couldn't vote for John McCain this year. "I supported him enthusiastically in 2000, but he's hired the same people who ran him into the ground last time to run his campaign," she said. McCain's tone was more negative now. "It breaks my heart."

Most people don't care about the consultants a candidate hires — very few handlers achieve the celebrity status of a Karl Rove or a James Carville. Most voters who supported McCain in 2000 but not this year have more obvious gripes: they don't like the way he's shaved his policy positions to approach Republican dogma. They may remember that he opposed the Bush tax cuts before he favored them...

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Editor’s note: See Joe Klein discuss the latest developments on the campaign trail, tonight on AC360° 10p ET.

Joe Klein
AC360° Contributor
TIME columnist

A few days before Barack Obama was to announce his choice for Vice President, he was asked at a North Carolina town meeting what qualities he wanted in a running mate. He wandered through a derisive, if desultory, critique of Dick Cheney, then switched gears. "I want somebody ... who shares with me a passion to make the lives of the American people better than they are right now," he said. "I want somebody who is mad right now that people are losing their jobs." And I immediately thought, Uh-oh.

Memories of John Kerry in 2004 came flooding back, of how he tended to describe his feelings rather than experience them, of how he suddenly—and unconvincingly—started to say he was "angry" about this or that when his consultants told him that Howard Dean's anger about the war in Iraq was hitting home with voters. And then, in the general election, Kerry kept repeating the word strength rather than demonstrating it. Clearly, Obama's consultants have given him similar advice, that he was on the short end of a passion gap—that it was time for emo. A day earlier, he had said wage disparities between genders made his "blood boil."

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Joe Klein
AC360° Contributor
TIME columnist

"I had the courage and the judgment to say that I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war," John McCain said during a Rochester, N.H., town meeting on July 22. "It seems to me that Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign."

It was a remarkable statement, as intemperate a personal attack as I've ever heard a major-party candidate make in a presidential campaign, the sort of thing that no potential President of the United States should ever be caught saying. (A prudent candidate has aides sling that sort of mud.) It was also inevitable.

You could see McCain's frustration building as Barack Obama traipsed elegantly through the Middle East while the pillars of McCain's bellicose regional policy crumbled in his wake. It wasn't only that the Iraqi government seemed to take Obama's side in the debate over when U.S. forces should leave (sooner rather than later).

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Joe Klein
TIME Magazine columnist

John McCain said this today in Rochester, New Hampshire:

"This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign."

This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered. I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.  Read more

Joe Klein
TIME Magazine columnist

I can't understand why the New York Times won't publish this from John McCain. The op-ed page clearly owes him equal time, after publishing Barack Obama last week.

If the standard, as Times Op-Editor wrote in his memo, is "new information," McCain's op-ed clearly meets it: the new information is McCain's inability to adjust his position now that the Iraqi government has announced what must be considered a major change of policy.

For example, we have this:

[Obama] makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

But, of course, that's wrong. Maliki endorsed a 16-month timetable. And now the Iraqi government is saying that American troops should be out by 2010. (Actually, I see Shipley's point here: new information would be McCain's reaction to the Iraqis setting an 2010 end date.)

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Editor's note: See Joe Klein tonight on AC360°

Joe Klein
TIME Magazine columnist

The Iraqis have been sending signals for months. They didn't want long term U.S. bases. They didn't want U.S. troops acting independently any more. They wanted some sort of drawdown...and now this, which will have different meanings in both Iraq and the United States.

In Iraq, it means that Maliki now feels confident that he is in charge of the government–and that the government's internal opposition, the Sunni insurgent remnants and the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr don't have the strength to threaten him (or his Kurdish and Hakim family allies). It may also mean that he feels he has the strength to handle, by inclusion or exclusion, the Sunni Awakening forces that were raised and funded by the U.S. military. It should also be clear that Maliki isn't commenting on the military viability of a 16 month withdrawal schedule: he has no idea about the logistics or problems involved in removing 130,000 troops and huge amounts of equipment from the theater of battle.

In short, what Maliki is saying is: Please leave, as soon as possible. He may be saying this for local, political reasons, in the runup to the regional Iraqi elections, but he's saying it.

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