Monday, March 31, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Guess the Campaign!
On background, which campaign, looking to the fall, said this:
"McCain will be able to call out Obama on the public financing issue, and has a leg up in terms of making the reformer/ethics leader argument."
Yes, it's a little bit of a trick question because, of course, I've heard -- almost word for word -- the same argument from both Clinton and McCain staffers. It seems as though it's not enough to make McCain's argument about Obama and foreign policy, HRC must also make it about domestic policy as well. Next: McCain better at Scrabble, does not fall asleep during church!
The evidence as to whether McCain actually has a better record on reform and ethics is a bit lopsided: McCain has been around for so long, one can cherry pick all day examples of when he erred, some more significant than others. Obama simply doesn't have a resume that allows for an equivalent examination. This isn't to say he's been lax in ethics or reform, it's just that, if Obama had been in the Senate for decades, I'm sure we could find plenty of examples of when -- as they're always saying about McCain -- he didn't "live up to his own standards."
Happily, voters distrustful of higher standards and the inability of candidates to meet them have a Third Way in Clinton herself, whose campaign always lets it be known that in 35 years of experience, she has done little to raise her own standards -- but has consistently met them.
About Swampland
Ana Marie Cox is the founding editor of Wonkette and the author of the novel Dog Days. Read more
Joe Klein is TIME's political columnist and author of six books, most recently Politics Lost. His weekly TIME column, "In the Arena," covers national and international affairs. In 2004 he won the National Headliner Award for best magazine column. Read more
Senior Writer Karen Tumulty has been TIME's National Political Correspondent since 2001, and has also covered the White House and Congress for the magazine. A native of San Antonio, she is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard Business School, where her career choice has significantly lowered the average salary of her graduating class. But she gets lots of free magazines. Read more
Jay Carney is TIME's Washington bureau chief. He has covered both the Clinton and Bush 43 White Houses, as well as Congress. Before coming to Washington, he spent three years reporting from TIME's Moscow bureau. In his next life, he would like to write for Sports Illustrated. Read more
Jay Newton-Small Jay Newton-Small covers politics for TIME. She has covered the Bush 43 White House and also Congress from the DeLay era to the present. And, yes, despite the misleading name SHE is a she. Read more
Michael Scherer is a correspondent in TIME's Washington bureau covering the 2008 presidential campaign. He has worked national assignments for Mother Jones magazine and Salon.com. Read more
Mike Murphy is a political consultant who helped elect more than a dozen GOP Senators and Governors including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney. In 2000, Murphy was a senior strategist for John McCain's presidential campaign.
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