It’s bunk, all of it, and nobody understands this better than John McCain. With his chameleonlike, whatever-gets-you-through-the-night ideology, McCain intends to use the same below-the-belt, commie-baiting, watermelon-waving smear tactics that Clinton used against Obama in the Democratic primaries, except at tenfold intensity. Once the victim of a classic racist smear job in backwoods South Carolina (where he was whipped in the 2000 primary after a Karl Rove whispering campaign suggested he had an illegitimate black daughter), McCain has now positioned himself on the business end of that same deal. ~Matt Taibbi

Via Kelley Vlahos

Watermelon-waving?  It takes a certain mindset to conjure up that reference out of thin air.  I must have missed that one, but then I am not so exquisitely attuned to the racial overtones of critiquing Obama’s consistency on his war position (the infamous “fairy tale”) or the claim that Lyndon Johnson was instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act.  The lie that the Clinton campaign trafficked in racist appeals during the primaries is one of the most popular, most dishonest attacks of this election cycle, though it was probably one of the least effective outside of professional pundit and blogger circles.  This lie gained currency because it fit the portrayal of the Clintons as utterly unscrupulous and willing to do or say anything to win, even though there was no substance to the claim in this case.  The new lie is that McCain is going to employ such appeals, when he has repeatedly gone out of his way to overreact to the slightest hint of anything remotely offensive, such that he initially ruled out talking about controversies pertaining to Obama’s associates that the news networks had already been covering for weeks. 

That doesn’t mean that McCain isn’t going to attack Obama personally, as I have long been arguing that this election was going to be one of the nastier ones in recent memory because both candidacies are founded on appeals to biography and character, which means that character assassination will be the order of the day.  This won’t take the shape of “watermelon-waving” smears, but will be framed in terms of experience, national security and Americanism, which is to say that it will be pretty much a standard-issue critique of “weak” and “naive” Democrats who are supposedly not zealous enough in their Americanism.  This is not something new for McCain starting in the last couple of years–this is how he sees the world.       

Taibbi is right to the extent that the Democratic nomination contest has not ushered in an era of bunny rabbits and rainbows “a futuristic era of political tolerance and open-mindedness,” but did anyone besides maybe Scarlett Johannson ever believe that it would?  Taibbi’s piece is also interesting in that it may be the first evidence that once-friendly and sympathetic journalists are turning on their creation, which could be doom for McCain.  But by and large Taibbi’s criticism of McCain lands with a thud.  Consider this opening paragraph:

McCain’s transformation is so complete that at a recent town-hall meeting in Nashville, when asked to name an author who inspired him, the candidate — who once described televangelists of the Jerry Falwell genus as “agents of intolerance” — put none other than Joel Osteen at the top of his list. “He’s inspirational,” McCain said.

Of course, you have to be on some kind of medication (as Joel Osteen often appears to be) to think that Joel Osteen represents anything remotely similar to the televangelism of Jerry Falwell.  It is deeply worrisome that McCain finds Joel Osteen inspirational, but in the very phoniness of Osteen Taibbi should find some consolation: the message he preaches is false and deeply antithetical to any sort of traditional or conservative Christianity, which is probably why it is hugely popular and why McCain sees some advantage in throwing out Osteen’s name.  Who knows?  Maybe McCain really is inspired by such an empty vision, which is sad, but it hardly demands the vitriol Taibbi heaps upon it, unless Taibbi is actually bothered by McCain’s lack of fundamentalism.  Mentioning Osteen is evidence that McCain wants to be known for approaching religion in the most superficial way imaginable. 

Osteen is representative of the latest strain of American Christianity that draws on the nonsense of self-actualisation and prayer-as-wish fulfillment (Become a Better You is the title of his new book) with some of the prosperity gospel heresy thrown in on the side.  Dopey self-help Christianity expressed in such books as Your Best Life Now (can you think of a title more out of step with the traditional Gospel message?) is hardly the same as the Christianity of the “religious right” with which McCain still has mostly poor relations.  If this is evidence of McCain’s “transformation,” McCain hasn’t changed all that much.  In yet another ham-fisted Democratic outreach to believers, Nancy Pelosi has tried to cultivate Osteen and his followers, and one of the memes out there about Osteen is that Obama is an Osteen-like politician (obviously not intended as a compliment).  Of course, if someone were to say about Obama what Taibbi has said about Osteen, that would be cited by some Rolling Stone correspondent as proof of “watermelon-waving” smears.

Most of the rest of Taibbi’s charge that McCain has been “transformed” into a “dumbed-down, hypersimplified incarnation” of himself shows that Taibbi wasn’t paying attention to McCain’s foreign policy views for very long.  The fearmongering and the simplistic view of the world have been there for at least a decade since he started pursuing the Presidency.