Looking for victory in deceit

By Libby Spencer

Krugman has a good column today on the slimy tactics that have become the hallmark of the McCain campaign. I think the sex-ed ad really pushed a lot of pundits over the edge. Read it all of course, it's short, but a few choice cuts here.

Or take the story of Mr. Obama’s alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for “age and developmentally appropriate education”; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.

One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.

But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.

And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?

What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

That's the understatement of the year. Cheney, although he may be evil incarnate, at least understands how world politics work. If by some ill fortune this pair manages to win the race, we would have two clueless "leaders" at the helm. Even more frightening, between the two of them, Palin is the smart one.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)