GOP Nominee
Former Candidates
Here is a truth-challenged e-mail I received today from John McCain’s campaign manager, Terry Nelson:
There are many reasons to support John McCain, but as we approach this quarter’s fundraising deadline tonight at midnight, let me remind you of just one of them…
John McCain is the only candidate who can defeat Hillary Clinton.
If you haven’t already done so, I hope you will make a last-minute donation to help our final push before the deadline. Please also pass this message along to your friends and family to remind them of the stakes in this election.
The clock is ticking…
Sincerely,
Terry Nelson
Campaign Manager
I’m not sure which prevarication is worse. Asserting that McCain is the only candidate who can defeat Hillary Clinton, when the former First Lady has defeated Senator McCain, head-to-head, in each of the past five polls (by an average of 3.5%), and in nine of the past twelve.
Or, the fact that Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani has trailed Hillary Clinton in just twelve of the past 52 polls in which they were paired head-to-head for the general election (that figure drops to eight if you omit Newsweek’s blatantly biased polls). Even as the match-up between the New York politicians has tightened in recent weeks, Giuliani still maintains a one-point average lead over Clinton over the past 13 surveys, in which they’ve each won six and tied once.
Either way, advancing such a fallacious argument only expedites the demise of McCain’s presidential aspirations.
John, you’re right about one thing. The clock is ticking…
June 30th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
[...] post by Aron Goldman and software by Elliott [...]
June 30th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
I don’t see how this is a lie considering the facts are so “soft” for any Republican candidate to claim they can beat any Democratic candidate. The claim that McCain could beat Clinton holds the same weight as Giuliani, Romney or Thompson claiming they can beat her. Pointing to polls this early in the game is reckless.
June 30th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
I would classify the McCain e-mail as “puffery” that doesn’t mean anything, not as a lie.
June 30th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
The shoe fits…
lie
Noun
1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.
2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.
Verb
1. To present false information with the intention of deceiving.
2. To convey a false image or impression.
June 30th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
[...] Clark Link to Article john mccain Desperate McCain Resorts to Lies to Lift Campaign » Posted at [...]
July 1st, 2007 at 12:23 am
…WTF?
July 1st, 2007 at 1:29 am
Aron,
Nothing in that McCain email was a lie. It was simply an optimistic forward reaching statement. Had McCain said he’s the only guy who could beat Hillary tomorrow, you might have a point.
What I find to be a bigger problem with this email is the fact that Terry Nelson can’t come up with a better reason for donating to McCain than pointing to Hillary as the worse option. This seems to be common with Team McCain…they can’t possibly hope to make conservatives like him, so the next best thing is to make conservatives dislike everyone else more.
July 1st, 2007 at 3:06 am
McCain might be right (although he can’t actually know).
None of us know who can win until later in the year.
July 1st, 2007 at 8:20 am
Aron,
I think it’s nuts when, 6 months before the primaries and 18 months before a general any candidates supporters are claiming only they can beat Hillary.
July 1st, 2007 at 9:23 am
Aron,
“Never subscribe to malice that which can be blamed upon stupidity.”
I have seen similar statements put out by Brownback supporters, Huckabee supporters, Ron Paul supporters, Thompson supporters, and Gingrich supporters. You see them almost hourly from Giuliani supporters. I am curious. What’s the difference between what a McCain supporter says in an Email and what the others have been saying?
If you accuse McCain’s people of lying, you must, by extension accuse all the rest of willful and malicious deception. Do you really wish to go there?
July 1st, 2007 at 10:25 am
marK,
Please cite a quote from any other candidate or their campaign manager in which it was asserted as fact(not suggested or insinuated) that only they can possibly defeat Hillary Clinton or win the 2008 general election, and rest assured, they will be equally called to task for having engaged in willful deception. The baseless statement from McCain’s campaign manager (not some random supporter) on the eve of the 2nd quarter fundraising deadline was not necessarily issued with malicious intent, but nonetheless revealed a deliberate, unscrupulous attempt to mislead the public by conveying a false impression. The word admittedly stings, and for that reason it was not used beyond the headline, but, by definition, it was a lie.
The boldest statement I could find from any candidate was from Giuliani’s strategy director, Brent Seaborn, who, a week and a half ago, stated factually:
Mayor Giuliani is the only Republican candidate who consistently beats presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Mayor Giuliani leads Senator Clinton in 34 of 41 national polls. Furthermore, Mayor Giuliani is the only Republican candidate in this race that can expand the general election playing field on to Democratic turf - states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, Washington, Oregon and Pennsylvania. By expanding the playing field to this extent we will force the Democrats to play on defense rather than on offense in our territory.
The sole assertion made by Seaborn that is disputable is that only Giuliani can win in Pennsylvania, when some polls have shown that, while McCain loses to both Hillary and Obama, his defeat is within the margin of error.
July 1st, 2007 at 11:14 am
C’mon, Aron - you’re clearly a smart guy, and you know better. You don’t need to defend your overstatement with reductive and non-applicable dictionary definitions.
In political discussion, but especially around election time or around any hotly contested issue, the line between “lie” and “debatable assertion” gets intentionally blurred for the sake of empty accusations. It’s an immature and repellent tactic, and in recent years has become rather more a specialty of the political left (though it will only take a few loudmouths on the right for that to change). We hear honestly wrong or supposedly wrong statements also described as lies - it’s been a drumbeat in Democrat propaganda against Bush et al - and, as the campaigns heat up, every time candidates or spokespersons neglect to add “we think” or “we believe” or “I feel sure” they’ll open themselves up to the charge.
It’s not a lie for the coach to look at his players and shout, “We’re gonna win!” Everyone knows the coach is stating his belief, not something about which he can possibly have certain knowledge. The McCain e-mail is just an overdone version of the same thing. It’s also not a lie if the person who makes the statement actually believes it to be true.
The assertion in the McCain e-mail happens to be lame and laughable, and it also stands as yet another in a long line of statements by McCain or from his camp that undermine his own party.
But it doesn’t deserve the word “lie.”
If I wanted to get exercised about your comment, I’d say, “Calling that statement a lie is a lie!” In my view, seizing on any debatable assertion and calling it a lie is one of the most annoying of all rhetorical ploys, one part inflammatory, one part wearisome. Anyone who does it deserves to be tuned out until they come back ready to argue civilly.
July 1st, 2007 at 12:32 pm
CK,
Perhaps I am giving Terry Nelson more credit than he deserves, but he is too smart to actually believe John McCain is the only candidate who can defeat Hillary Clinton.
It goes without saying there is a clear distinction between being wrong and lying.
President Bush, like the global intelligence community, believed Saddam Hussein maintained stockpiles of bio/chem WMDs. I won’t even concede they were wrong, as it is a distinct possibility they were transported to Syria or Russia prior to the US invasion, or have simply not yet been found within Iraq.
This letter disseminated by Nelson is not a motivational speech intended to rally McCain and his supporters, but a deliberate attempt to mislead the public into believing the narrative that the Arizona senator is uniquely electable. Nelson’s assertion is aggravated by the absence of evidence to back up his statement. Quite the contrary, all existing evidence suggests that not only can McCain not defeat Hillary Clinton, but that Rudy Giuliani has, distinctly, the best chance among all GOP contenders to win a general election against Senator Clinton.
That said, since the accurate use of the word ‘lies’ unjustifiably deflects attention away from the point being made, I have edited the headline to one that is perceived as less inflammatory or wearisome.
July 1st, 2007 at 12:54 pm
McCain is done, why doesn’t he just quit now?
Oh yea, Thompson still has to enter the race, how convienent for him.
Oh yea, Romney has been stagnant in the polls.
July 1st, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Anyway, look at the damn polls! Only Rudy is ahead of the liberal Hillary and Obama and Rudy
does not say these things. Some of you act like this election is a joke.
July 1st, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Polls are a joke. Look at hang-up rates (usually not provided). This means that telephone polls don’t meet the criteria for a random sample. This means actual margin of errors could be as high as 15-20% with persistent biases.
Near an election polls give a ballpark estimate of voter opinion. This far out it’s hard for polls to even do that.
July 1st, 2007 at 9:58 pm
[...] Clark Link to Article john mccain Desperate McCain Resorts to Baseless Assertion to Lift Campaign » [...]
July 2nd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
I am a “G-Man” myself, and I agree that Rudy — not McCain — would be Hillary’s most formidable General Election opponent (as well as Obama or Edwards, for that matter).
But accusing McCain of dishonesty? Honestly, at this point, its a matter of interpretation. Some interpretations are more plausable than others (and this interpretation is a lot less plausable than it was before the “CIR” fracas). But electability is a key issue, and I’d hate for the Republicans to make the same mistake the Dems made in 2004 by making a snap judgment on electability at the last minute. I say, let the candidates make their electability claims and we’ll evaluate them on the merits.