'The Most Disgraceful Campaign in American History'
Introducing the NonZero Time Machine
Today we introduce a new feature: the NonZero Time Machine. It works like the time machine in H.G. Wells’s novel by that name (see illustration below, from the 1960 movie version), with two exceptions:
1) Whereas Wells’s protagonist used the machine to travel into the future, we’ll be traveling into the past.
2) Whereas the technological breakthrough underlying Wells’s time machine required a deep knowledge of physics, the technological breakthrough underlying our time machine required a working knowledge of camcorders and landline phones. Those two devices permitted the creation, back before the era of webcams and broadband, of the Internet’s first video dialogue site focused on public affairs: Bloggingheads.tv, founded in 2005 by our own Robert Wright, along with Mickey Kaus and Greg Dingle. After literally thousands of conversations involving journalists, academics, and other analysts, Bloggingheads evolved into the NonZero Podcast, and its archives became NonZero’s archives. Which is to say: the NonZero Time Machine.
The NZN team has been digging through those archives to find clips that shed distinctive light on the history of American culture and politics—and, sometimes, thereby illuminate the present or even the future. In the coming months we’ll be sharing some of our favorite discussions—with remastered audio and readable transcripts—in the hope that they will encourage new conversations about where we’ve been and where we’re headed.
Today, the time machine brings us back to Sept. 2008, when Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein—both now columnists for the New York Times—sat down to discuss whether John McCain was conducting a “disgraceful” presidential campaign. Viewed from the present, this conversation is a reminder of how the definition of “disgraceful” has changed. As the Douthat and Klein of today could no doubt explain to the Douthat and Klein of 2008, the things we call disgraceful are now more, well, disgraceful than they used to be.
Before you click “play,” some useful background: In the preceding months, McCain’s campaign had launched several misleading attacks on McCain’s opponent, Barack Obama. One ad falsely accused Obama of pushing legislation to “teach comprehensive sexual education to kindergartners.” In another ad, McCain’s campaign claimed Obama was trying to slyly insult vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin when he quipped that McCain’s promise to break with the policies of the Bush administration amounted to “putting lipstick on a pig.”
The controversy over these claims came to a head a few days before Douthat and Klein recorded their conversation, when McCain appeared on ABC’s The View. “We know that those two ads are untrue,” host Joy Behar charged, calling the claims about Obama “lies.” McCain maintained that the ads were fair and honest, but Behar wasn’t swayed. In the ensuing days, the Republican candidate faced a deluge of criticism for defending the attacks, which could no longer be brushed off as the work of heedless campaign staffers.
OK, now you can click “play”—and/or read the transcript below (which has been edited for readability and clarity). Please feel free to share, in the comments section, any thoughts about how (and why) standards of civility and honesty in US politics have changed in the past 16 years, and what role various actors, including journalists, may have played in this.
Douthat: Hey Ezra, how are you?
Klein: I'm good, how are you Ross?
Douthat: I'm great. For those of you watching at home, I'm Ross Douthat, senior editor at The Atlantic.
Klein: And I’m Ezra Klein, a lowly associate editor at The American Prospect.
Douthat: Yeah, all of us senior editors, we always sit around at the bars after work and laugh about the miserable lives of the associate editors stuck there till all hours.
Klein: As you know full well, we associate editors are outside the bars in the cold looking in the window.
Douthat: I remember those days well Ezra, I do. And I feel for you, just not enough to open the doors and let you in.
So speaking of cruel and unfeeling, I guess we should probably just start by talking about horse race politics. The story of the moment is [that] John McCain is running the most disgraceful campaign in American history, possibly? Maybe in world history?