Noam, I think you've been suckered by their act. The cognitive dissonance required to actually believe that their sex-ed meme is not a "Willie Horton"-esque ad of its own is unreal; all they did was take out the racial overtones and insert children.

I don't think McCain ran "the dirtiest campaign in history", as some of the more hysterical left wing bloggers are calling it. I think calling Kerry a coward, liar and traitor was much, much worse than anything Obama got. And McCain DOES deserve great credit for not using Wright.

Noam - how can you include calling Obama a socialist as a dirty trick? McCain had every right to point out his progressive/punitive/whatever the newspeak is these days, tax plans and try and paint them as socialist.

How in Mao's name is that a dirty trick? That's absurd. Politics is a contact sport, as it should be.

I think you need a well earned break.

The guiltier they are, the more outraged they are when confronted.

This goes for cheaters in all categories.

Oh, wait! Obama didn't agree to ten town hall meetings. Or repudiate and denounce and tar and feather John McCain's personal hero, John Lewis.

Never mind.

Iggy, calling Obama a socialist is worse than a dirty trick, it is an insult to the intelligence of most Americans. Socialism is the Government controlling the means of production, it has nothing to do with marginal tax rates. Their screaming Socialism is in fact worse than stupid, it was suicidal for the McCain group because it turned off independents in droves.

I think HIllary ran a dirtier campaign, actually. The only reason I say this is because they were both Democrats, and she said things you just don't say about other members of your own party, like McCain was qualified to be President, but Obama was not.

The confusion - cognitive dissonance, as GSpinks puts it (one of my favorite terms) - is because you're thinking like a liberal.  To a liberal, the sex ad is a totally low blow and constitutes playing dirty - Obama wanted age-appropriate sex education, and what could be wrong with that?  And how dare the McCain folks suggest that Obama wants to teach kindergarteners about sex!  But that's not really the point . . .to conservatives and many moderates, NO sex education is age-appropriate for kindergarteners.  To them, Obama's stance on sex education is a completely legitimate campaign issue.   Millions of parents think school, especially school in the very early years, should not interfere in this sort of education.  The McCain camp probably felt the same way, and probably think that Obama's position overreached.

Etc.

The McCain camp got no credit for pulling its punches on several issues, while the Obama camp largely got a pass on anything it did - which wasn't a lot, mind you.  Both campaigns were honourable run by any historical measure.

Socialism, and the earlier 'socialize medicine' charge were intellectually bankrupt, but were based on the fact that most of their voting block doesn't actually know what it means and what the consequences are, only that its like communism, and that was bad right? Actually not that dirty a trick, but dirty enough. Celebrity, Kindergarten sex ed, Ayers, lipstick, were plenty worse.

McCain was a bit trapped on wright, he explicitly said, while he was still old McCain, that Wright was off limits. It would clearly be a hard question to answer "Er, you said, but now.."  But more than that, it didn't work here in PA where 527s were running it. And it didn't work for Hillary. Obama had a great way of turning those attacks against the attacker. And "associations' only works when the voters don't know the guy, which was becoming less and less the case by election day due to the long election season. What I think agrieved the McCainiacs was the lack of critisism for Obama's exaggerations (taxing health benefits, etc.) which while truthy, didn't exactly explain McCains' positions. This was considered 'equivalent' to the attacks above, which is laughable.

But I hardly think they were both honorable, there was clearly a lot more abuse on McCains' side. Further, while things like swift boating etc were more execrable, they weren't actually run by Bush's campaign. The actual filth from McCain was I believe unparalleled in recent memory at least.

phargle,

First off, the "sex ed" ad contained a sleazy outright lie: "comprehensive sex education." So it's not just a matter of interpretation, it's a matter of distortion and dishonesty. So if being troubled by dishonest distortions of the actual record makes one a liberal, sign me up.

Second off, you're lumping "many moderates" in with conservatives who would find it objectionable to tell young kids not to let adults touch them. Based on personal experience and common sense, I suspect that many *more* moderates would agree with the allegedly liberal view on the matter.

And: How on earth can anyone keep a straight face when arguing that the Socialist smear was anything but? It's pretty much exactly the same as "McCain is a fascist."

Overall, though, looking back at it now, McCain's campaign wasn't probably the dirtiest in recent history. The most desperate, maybe, and certainly the most juvenile. All in all, not something he can be proud of.

Whether it was the dirtiest in history is not the issue. It certainly was dirtier than McCain promised it would be, certainly dirtier than Mr. Honor should be able to afford and keep that reputation.

He should feel guiltiest about foisting Palin on us all, and for trying to hide her belligerent stupidity, unsuccessful at that was.

Calling Obama a socialist (some people used the word communist) reminded me of the way this charge has a long history in the south when people tried organizing black & white workers around their common interests.  It was used against MLK as well when he tried talking about economic justice.  So it smells like an old racist scare tactic that plays on ignorance.  So yeah, I think it's dirty.

McCain's ads didn't SEEM as dirty as the Willie Horton and Swiftboating ads of ealier GOP campaigns simply becuase they didn't work as well. McCain's ads were as dirty as the GOP has always run, they just were not as smart as the ones Lee Atwater and Karl Rove could have come up with.

Calling Obama a socialist just sounded like tired boilerplate, circa 1985 - which was embarrasing more than anything else - 1985 is where McCain still lives.  Who the eff cares what Henry Kissinger thinks? It wasn't that bad of a charge as these things go, the celebrity thing was softball too, yet quite effective.  Saying he didn't put country first was much worse.

I argued with my husband about this last night, and I still stand by it: Iggy is right, McCain deserves credit for not inciting even more racial hatred than was already flowing out there by using Wright, which he nixed way back before Palin even came on the scene.  It was principled of him.

He knew damn good and well about the growing number of death threats against Obama.  Obviously the Nazi Prom Queen could give two shits about that, and probably would have cheered if anything happened - she's a sociopath, McCain is not.  Presidential ambition often causes morality poisoning.

I won't defend McCain's campaign, but I forgive him.  It's a yin and yang world and we could use the guy.  He's a Republican ready to help on climate change and who took a brave, principled stand on  immigration (before he caved to the crazies, but still - I won't bring up the shameful caving on torture either).  

Come on, he has the good sense to hate Mitt Romney - I forgive everything he's ever done for that alone.

The campaign was dirtier than McCain promised it would be but nowhere near as dirty as it would have been had the nominee been Giuliani or Romney or just about anyone else.

And another thing, the whole ACORN outrage was a joke on its face, and McCain pretended to be indignant about it.

The only victim in that sorry mess was ACORN, because they paid people [stupidly, imo, particularly in this volunteer-rich election] to get these cards filled, and of course some unscrupulous people are going to just sit down with a stack of cards and shove fake names and addresses in, of people who don't exist and therefore will not be voting. No harm done, and the cards were checked and rejected.

Obviously, now that they've lost, the wingnuts will not shut up about ACORN. And the actual true voter fraud that did happen - with touchscreens flipping Obama votes to McCain votes - gets nary a peep in the press. Since Obama won regardless, and nobody's going to have to drag the Supreme Court into this, why not investigate it? How is this not news, and how is it OK?

stgla, that's a pretty low bar you're setting. Also, I'm not sure at all that Huckabee would have been as bad. And I don't give McCain any points for hating Romney, because he appears to have hated everyone/anyone who had the temerity to run against him. Go ahead and like him if you want to, but do it with your eyes open and know what he is.

Here i was hoping that the Republicans would learn that personal attacks based on innuendo were not the way to win in a campaign, and now it seems that they can make a plausible argument that they didn't do it enough.

Did John McCain nix attacking Obama over the Jeremiah Wright association because he thought it would