McCain campaign’s volley of untruths is disappointing

I’ve been disappointed in recent days to see the degree of falsehood being put forth as fact by the campaign of John McCain.

The media has done a good job of calling out the McCain campaign for what is understandably being called deception by many, but I felt I, as a journalist and an independent voter who’s fed up with dishonesty in politics, had to add my voice to the chorus of people calling the statements exactly what they are: flip-flops and untruths.

A serious flop came in Sarah Palin’s interview with ABC News, which aired on Thursday. In it, she said she believes humans may play a role in climate change. That entirely contradicts previous statements, even though she said in the interview that it didn’t.

“Show me where I have ever said that there’s absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that,” Palin said. You can watch the interview here.

The Associated Press did a good job of showing when and where Palin has said that climate change isn’t caused by humans. She told the Internet news site Newsmax, “A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. … I’m not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made.”

She also was quoted, according to The Associated Press, by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner as saying this: “I’m not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity.”

But such a flop, by itself, isn’t any worse that Barack Obama’s flop on a Second Amendment issue that I wrote about earlier this week. It’s the constant misrepresentation of the truth from the McCain campaign in recent days that’s concerning. A few more examples:

• As reported by the Washington Post, McCain said today on ABC’s The View that Palin had never sought congressional earmarks as governor of Alaska. The truth is that she requested $200 million this year alone and employed a Washington lobbyist to help secure it.

• One of McCain’s newest TV ads accuses Obama of backing legislation that would teach “comprehensive sex education to kindergarteners.” That’s not true, reports McClatchy’s Washington bureau. As a state senator, Obama voted for legislation allowing school boards to teach “age-appropriate” sex education. As McClatchy reports, instead of mandating “comprehensive sex education” in kindergarten, the bill “gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.”

• Palin has repeatedly said on the campaign trail that she told Washington, “Thanks, but no thanks,” to that infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” A second McCain TV ad claims that Palin “stopped the Bridge to Nowhere.” But she didn’t. As reported by The Associated Press, Palin appeared to support the bridge during her gubernatorial campaign and didn’t scrap plans to build the bridge until “after the project had become an embarrassment to the state (and) after federal dollars for the project were pulled back and diverted to other uses in Alaska.” When she scraped the project a year ago, she didn’t tell Congress, “Thanks but no thanks.” She said there was no point to trying to persuade Congress to fund the project.

To be certain, Palin has been targeted by some on the left with lies, just as Obama has been inaccurately targeted by the right. But those have been largely underground attacks that neither side has proven emitted from the other campaign. The volley of untruths spewed in recent days has come directly from the mouths of McCain and Palin and their McCain-approved advertising.

Such tactics turn off voters. I expected more honorable conduct from a campaign built largely on McCain’s honorable military and congressional record of service.