Grilling John McCain

McCain got away with absolutely nothing at The View today:

The ladies of “The View” confronted John McCain today for lying in his recent attack ads, pressed him on abortion and questioned his choice of Sarah Palin.

In arguably his toughest interview yet, co-host Joy Behar asked McCain, “There are ads running from your campaign… Now we know that those two ads are untrue, they are lies. And yet, you at the end of it say you approve these messages. Do you really approve these?”

Barbara Walters then threw in her condemnation, telling McCain: “You, yourself, said the same thing about putting lipstick on a pig…”

Open Left has a list:

Here’s a summary of how this appearance may really hurt him:

1. Joy Behar said to his face that his recent ads about Obama were lies

2. Barbara Walters pointed out that he himself uses “lipstick on a pig” and that Obama’s reference was not about Palin.

3. McCain said Roe vs. Wade was a bad decision to booing from the audience.

4. Whoopi Goldberg said that appointing strict constitutionalists, the GOP mantra, would return her to slavery.

5. Barbara Walters kept pressing McCain on just what Sarah Palin was supposed to be coming to Washington to reform and suggested it was he who needed reforming.

6. They forced McCain to talk about separation of church and state and how a Palin administration, if it came to that, might not see a need for much separation.

UPDATE 7. They told him that Palin did accept earmarks and he responded with the whopper “not as Governor she didn’t.”

Josh has more on that:

It’s become pathological. John McCain just claimed on TV that Sarah Palin has never requested an earmark for her state — when actually her state gets more earmarks than any other state in the country. And this year she asked for $197 million worth of them herself.

Even the AP couldn’t ignore his lying — even though they phrased it in their own anemic way. “When pressed about Palin’s record of requesting and accepting such money for Alaska, McCain ignored the record and said: “Not as governor she didn’t.”

For the record Palin requested $197 million this year and $256 million last year. Per capita, that’s $288 this year and $376 last year.

To give you some perspective, Palin herself requested at least ten times the dollar value of earmarks as most states get total every year.

More perspective:

McCain’s claim that Palin never accepted earmarks as the governor of Alaska is divorced from reality. In fact, she actively sought them:

– Though Palin did reduce Alaska’s earmark requests, “in her two years in office, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation.”

– In March 2008, Palin wrote an op-ed in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, saying that her “role at the federal level is simply to submit the most well-conceived earmark requests we can” and that her reduction of requests was a response “to the changing circumstances in Congress.”

– In February 2008, Palin’s office sent Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) “a 70-page memo outlining almost $200 million worth of new funding requests for the state.”

– In her most recent earmark requests, “Palin requested millions of federal dollars for everything from improving recreational halibut fishing to studying the mating habits of crabs and the DNA of harbor seals.”

As ThinkProgress has noted, Palin has requested earmarks of the very type that McCain routinely mocks while on the campaign trail. As Walters pointed out, Palin was also a big fan of congressional pork as the Mayor of Wasilla, even hiring a lobbyist to help secure them.

In another post, Think Progress accepts the challenge:

On ABC’s The View today, host Joy Behar complained to John McCain that “you used to be more of the Maverick, then you sort of turned.” “In what way?” McCain asked. “You became much more lockstep, I think, with your party, with George Bush’s policies,” Behar answered, adding, “I don’t see the old John McCain. … I understand why — you want to get elected.” McCain issued this challenge in his defense:

I’ve been through this litany before, where I say, “ok, what specific area have I quote changed?” Nobody can name it. … I am the same person and I have the same principles.

McCain argued that on issues — “whether it be spending, whether it be climate change, whether it be the conduct of the war in Iraq, whether it be torture of prisoners” — he is “the same guy.”

ThinkProgress has gladly taken up the McCain challenge. We’ve compiled a document that lists the policy areas on which McCain has changed his position.

The flip-flop document notes that McCain has changed his position even on the four areas he cited — spending, climate change, the war in Iraq, and torture of prisoners[.] …

More flip-flop documentation here and here.

Matt Yglesias reminds us about the power of the media narrative:

Good story from the Associated Press:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Friday running mate Sarah Palin has never asked for money for lawmakers’ pet projects as Alaska governor when in fact she has sought nearly $200 million in earmarks this year.

As I’ve said before, though, the big question isn’t about whether the press writes some good individual stories. The big question is about whether the press creates a narrative. John McCain keeps saying things that aren’t true. So does his running mate. So do his campaign ads. So do his surrogates on television. When does that become a narrative? When do we get stories about how the McCain campaign has been “dogged by questions about its honesty?”

And Sam Stein at The Huffington Post has the ultimate flip-flop (emphasis in original):

Back in October 2007, when McCain’s candidacy still appeared dead and buried, the Senator berated the two Republican front runners for lacking the necessary political experience to handle commander in chief responsibilities.

“I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I’ve been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism,” the Senator declared. “I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time.”

Fast-forward nearly a year, and the argument McCain made back then is being used against his vice presidential pick today. Only Sarah Palin held the post of mayor of Wasilla for less time than Rudy Giuliani headed New York City. And her gubernatorial stint in Alaska is shorter than that of Mitt Romney’s in Massachusetts.

McCain, not surprisingly, has changed his tune. His campaign has suggested that as head of Alaska’s national guard, Palin had more national security experience than Obama. The Senator himself went on Fox News and declared:

“I’m so proud that she has displayed the kind of judgment and she has the experience and judgment as an executive… She’s been commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard … she’s had judgment on these issues. She’s had 12 years of elected office experience, including traveling to Kuwait, including being involved in these issues. I’m so proud she has the experience and judgment as an executive.”

Uh-huh. Guess she was just too modest to demonstrate any of that experience and judgment to Charlie Gibson.

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