A Day Without Partisan Sniping

It was a relief yesterday to be able to commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 events without having to listen to shrill negative campaining. The two candidates appeared jointly at an event in New York, for example, which appears to have been free of that kind of thing. Some bloggers observed the ban, some didn't. At the heart of it all was a very public agreement between McCain and Obama that this day needed to be above that kind of behavior.

As it turns out, maybe not the whole day. Salon reports that McCain's campaign aired an anti-Obama ad in the Denver area. It's this one.



Well, we can blame the TV station I suppose... maybe the got it and ran it by mistake. Then again, ithe ad was also uploaded to YouTube by the McCain campaign, and there is a September 11 date stamp.

In addition to it just breaking an AGREEMENT WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, the ad is another one that got on the wrong side of FactCheck.org. They take issue with most of it.

The ad says "they said she was doing 'what she was told.'" But the Obama adviser who's being quoted didn't accuse Palin of meekly following orders. What he actually said is that she made a false claim about Obama's legislative record and added, "maybe that's what she was told."
It says "they lashed out at Sarah Palin; dismissed her as 'good looking,'" But "they" didn't lash out at all. Obama -- who is the one pictured -- didn't say anything like that. The only one the McCain campaign quotes is Obama's running mate, Biden, and he actually offered the remark as a compliment. Biden said the "obvious" difference between Palin and himself is "she's good looking."
The ad says Obama was "disrespectful" when he accused Palin of "lying" about her record. But the truth is Palin's claim to have "said no" to the "bridge to nowhere" is indeed a dubious one, as we and many have pointed out.

So they broke the pact, they distorted quotes (so they went out of their way to break the pact) and to my mind they used 9/11 in a cynical way to attempt to gain a tactical advantage. Now THAT'S classy.