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John McCain is at it again. Saying convenient untruths – lies – to try to get elected. Richard Cohen has a good opinion piece on this in today’s Washington Post. “The Ugly New McCain“, By Richard Cohen 

The precise moment of McCain’s abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on “The View,” the daytime TV show created by Barbara Walters. Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running.  …

“Actually, they are not lies,” he said.

Actually, they are.

McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains — his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that’s all — but just as honorably. No more, though.

I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician’s lap.

Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story — that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.

McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir — the person in whose hands he would leave the country — is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

You can check out the rest for yourself. And now for a few political cartoons that make the same point.

Watch the video. Enough is enough!

Enough is Enough

“What their campaign has done this morning is the same game that has made people sick and tired of politics in this country. They seize on an innocent remark, try to take it out of context, throw out an outrageous ad because they know it’s catnip for the news media,” Mr. Obama said. “I’m assuming you guys heard this watching the news. I’m talking about John McCain’s economic policies and I said here’s more of the same, ‘You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. Suddenly, they say, Oh you must be talking about the governor of Alaska!’”

As the audience applauded, he added: “See it would be funny, it would be funny except, of course the news media decided that was the lead story yesterday. The McCain campaign would much rather have the story about phony and foolish diversions than about the future.”

By devoting a little more than five minutes to the lipstick controversy, Mr. Obama said he was finished discussing the matter and return to issues that Americans are concerned about . (Time will tell, of course, if this really is the final word on the subject.)

“Spare me the phony outrage. Spare me the phony talk about change,” Mr. Obama said. “We have real problems in this country right now and the American people are looking to us for answers, not distractions, no diversions, not manipulations.”