The Year of Taking Offense

We read:

"The McCain campaign was offended last week, mightily offended. Democratic senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia said McCain didn't care about the people he dropped bombs on during the Vietnam war. "You have to care about the lives of people," said Rockefeller, who supports Barack Obama for president. "McCain never gets into those issues."

This was tough criticism. Almost instantly it triggered emails from McCain's campaign headquarters expressing just how deeply offended McCain's allies were. First Orson Swindle, McCain's fellow POW in Vietnam, demanded that Obama "denounce" Rockefeller's statement. Then campaign flack Tucker Bounds zinged Obama for not "personally" condemning Rockefeller. Bounds was echoed by McCain's Senate buddy, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He urged Obama to "step up to the plate" and say Rockefeller's comment was "out of bounds."

What the McCain gang wanted, in effect, was an apology from Obama for what someone else had said. They didn't get one. Instead, Rockefeller said he was sorry for using "an inaccurate and wrong analogy," which scarcely qualified as a sincere apology.

Meanwhile, an obscure Obama press aide was trotted out to say Rockefeller had gone too far. That only prompted the McCain team to demand, once again, that the candidate himself, Obama, repudiate Rockefeller. There was no telling when the flap would end.

Of course the whole thing was largely playacting--in other words, political theater. Sure, Rockefeller's attack was nasty, unfair, and over the top. So what? McCain has heard much worse. He certainly did during his 2000 presidential bid. He did when he championed immigration reform. He's no stranger to the nasty, unfair, and over-the-top side of politics.

One of McCain's strengths has been his ability to stand up to political abuse without flinching or whining. This is surely a presidential trait: the ability to shut out insults and cheap attacks and hostile buzz and concentrate on what's important. Ronald Reagan was particularly good at this. Constant offense-taking wasn't a feature of his campaigns or his presidency.

But 2008 is different and not just for McCain. Peter Baker of the Washington Post has aptly dubbed it the "Year of Taking Offense." It's mostly fake. Candidates and their minions pretend to be offended by some sharp attack by an opponent. And the opponent or a campaign flunky pretends to be sorry.

Baker took note of a 48-hour period last month in which the following happened: Barack Obama's campaign is outraged that Hillary Rodham Clinton's husband supposedly questioned the Illinois senator's patriotism. Clinton's campaign is insulted that an Obama surrogate would compare the supposed attack to McCarthyism. The Obama campaign is shocked that a top Clinton supporter would compare an Obama supporter to Judas Iscariot. The Clinton campaign is beside itself that an Obama state worker would mention Monica Lewinsky's infamous blue dress.

That episode, in which numerous apologies were sought, wasn't the half of it. When Brit Hume of Fox News decided to list the recent cases of offense-taking and apology-demanding, it took five "fullscreens"--that is, five separate pages on a television screen. His list included Clinton strategist James Carville's labeling New Mexico governor Bill Richardson "Judas" for endorsing Obama and Obama's denunciation of his foreign policy adviser Samantha Power for calling Hillary Clinton a "monster." Carville, by the way, refused to apologize.

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