Klein Hammers Anti-Obama Book

Joe Klein of Time lets author Jerome Corsi and chief editor Mary Matalin have it over "Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality."

So we know the market for trash is there, and not so far from home. And we know, that Mary Matalin, who appears regularly on mainstream media programs like Meet the Press called the Corsi book in the New York Times today: “a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that.” But hey, Mary stands to make big bucks off this scholarship, which I'm sure was submitted for peer review and otherwise held to the highest editorial standards--and I'm sure her reputation and mediagenicity won't be damaged by this poisonous crap, and we're all friends here, aren't we? And, y'know, they say politics ain't beanbag...and it's all in the game to tell innocent, well-intentioned people that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim or that John Kerry wasn't really a hero in Vietnam. Or, as George W. Bush, once told a rightly outraged John McCain--whose wife and daughter Bush's minions had smeared--"It's just politics."

The Times article notes that while complete fact-checking takes time, it is already clear that "several of the book’s accusations, in fact, are unsubstantiated, misleading or inaccurate." Klein goes on to place the book in the context of the campaign.

But there is no excuse for what the McCain campaign is doing on the "putting America first" front. There is no way to balance it, or explain it other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used. There is a straight up argument to be had in this election: McCain has a vastly different view from Obama about foreign policy, taxation, health care, government action...you name it. He has lots of experience; it is always shocking to remember that this time four years ago, Barack Obama was still in the Illinois State Legislature. Apparently, though, McCain isn't confident that conservative policies and personal experience can win, given the ruinous state of the nation after eight years of Bush. So he has made a fateful decision: he has personally impugned Obama's patriotism and allows his surrogates to continue to do that. By doing so, he has allied himself with those who smeared him, his wife, his daughter Bridget, in 2000. Those tactics won George Bush a primary--and a nomination. But they proved a form of slow-acting spiritual poison, rotting the core of the Bush presidency. We'll see if the public decides to acquiesce to sleaze in 2008, and what sort of presidency--what sort of country--that will produce.

Out of 24 major newspapers publishing editorials on "Unfit for Command," exactly two found merit in its claims. Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times summed up:

Mr. Kerry has stretched the truth here and there, but earned his decorations. And the Swift Boat Veterans, contradicted by official records and virtually everyone who witnessed the incidents, are engaging in one of the ugliest smears in modern U.S. politics.

Let's see, should we listen to a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and what is widely acknowledged as one of the top newspapers in the world or to an author who specializes in partisan political hit-jobs for hire?

--Ballard Burgher