Not Virginia GOP’s finest moment

John Merli
Published: October 15, 2008

Year by year as we grow older (which certainly beats the alternative), I have grown less tolerant of things that I probably never gave a second thought to in the past. Three things that have evolved into
genuine “annoyances” are also somewhat related: unsolicited phone calls, front-door solicitors and stupid politics.

As far as unwanted sales calls, thank God for Caller ID and the government’s Do Not Call List. And as for those ringing my doorbell, without fail, at the most inopportune times (a negative skill unto itself),
I usually choose to simply ignore the strangers on my porch and eventually they flitter away.

Yet I do make an exception to the stranger-on-the-porch rule when possible and that’s for political volunteers of either party. Let’s be honest. This really has been one of the longest campaigns a lot of us
will probably ever witness, and while I’m an unabashed political junkie, these last 19 days until the election cannot come soon enough.

I’ve rarely voted for anyone based purely on party affiliation (a trait reinforced recently by my positive views of both Tom Davis and Mark Warner), but I must admit I think the McCain campaign (at least
until recently) has outdone itself in the slime-and-grime department. I think it finally got so bad last week that even John McCain couldn’t stomach it — and when you can’t stomach your own campaign,
you’ve got serious issues, my friends.

While Virginia seems to be a toss-up state right now on the presidential level (a remarkable turnaround, all things considered), some of the recent tactics of the commonwealth’s Republican party through
its chairman provide at least one local reason why McCain finds himself doing increasingly poor among likely voters.

Last weekend when Virginia GOP Chairman Jeffrey Frederick (according to Time magazine) climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door-to-door their
talking points and told them, “for instance, [make] the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden,” he showed a desperate and reprehensible behavior that is both stupid and a bit scary.

“Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon,” Frederick went on to tell his small army of canvassers, according to Time (a publication which has never exactly been a beacon of “liberal” thinking.) But no
amount of “liberal vs. conservative” name-calling can excuse such disgusting observations in a state political leader. And the fact that such inflammatory nonsense happened in our own state is nothing to
write home about.

“We don’t really know where Sen. Obama was born,” cried yet another information-challenged volunteer at that same Virginia GOP meeting, said Time. (Try Hawaii. It’s about 3,000 miles west of
California. The state? “Hawaii Five-O”? Work with me here.) Obviously, there are no entrance tests for these volunteer meetings and ignorance must breed more ignorance. I don’t mean to make fun of all
campaign volunteers, but I do mean to poke fun of some of them. Fortunately, both Virginia Republicans and Democrats (as well as the McCain camp) have denounced Frederick’s loathsome “talking
points” for his volunteers.

But it’s exactly this type of breathlessly stupid behavior inside Virginia and elsewhere (some of it surely committed by Democrats, as well) that eventually turns even the political junkies among us off
politics, and beyond being sad, that’s also a dangerous symptom in any serious democracy.

This is especially true this year, where more young people have registered to vote than at any other time in our history. There are common-sense boundaries of basic human behavior and decency that
should never be crossed, and down deep inside we all know immediately when they are violated.

I strongly suspect when the dust has fully settled on Campaign 2008, regardless of the winner, John McCain will look back on his scatter-shot, uncharacteristically mean-spirited run for the White House
with his head bowed. In an otherwise admirable career, he could find himself in those sometimes-painful retrospective interviews muttering “I regret” more than once while assessing the choices he’s made
the past two months.

It may be too late for the real John McCain to stand up and be counted on Nov. 4. But for his sake and ours, it’s probably worth a try.

John Merli can be reached at .